


Where Lies Darkness?

by Penny_Candy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Dark Pidge, Elements, Fear the soldering Iron, Gen, Goal was to make this as Dark as I could get it while avoiding the "major character death" tag, Hunk's secret cookie stash, Memory Loss, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, You've always wanted to know where he keeps it...., awww... he survived., furious computer genius set loose on the galaxy, lies and betrayal, mental landscapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9374015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penny_Candy/pseuds/Penny_Candy
Summary: Alien tech corrupts Pidge and the team must figure it out before everything is destroyed and she kills them all.





	1. A Shocking Problem

    “Pidge. Hurry. They’ll be onto us soon.” Keith’s tension was palpable as he kept watch on the corridor while the green paladin hacked into the secret base’s system to extract the information Allura had sent them to find.

 

    “I know, Keith! I’ve got the stupid alarm system right here in front of me, along with every security feed on the base. Don’t get your frilly panties in a bunch.” She growled in exasperation, “I’m working as fast as I can. They’ve installed new firewall layers since the last time we broke in. I have to be careful working my way in or they’ll be able to hack me back.” The keyboard clicked at a furious but steady pace despite Keith’s fretting. 

 

    “What the hell... is that?” The clicking paused and Keith found it difficult to keep his attention on the hall as he resisted the urge to demand to know what the problem was. If he asked, he’d just get his nose snapped off again. Her voice trailed off in a mutter as the typing resumed at a slower, more cautious rate of speed. Keith released his held breath and scanned the corridor.

 

    It was only him protecting Pidge. Shiro and the others were creating a diversion on the other side of the base. He hated guard duty, hated it. There was too much tension and too little action.  He’d rather be in the diversion force but Shiro had taken Hunk and Lance in order to use their ranged weaponry.  Quarters were too tight where the computer hub was for them to be effective here so that left Keith, who’s melee skills could keep the enemy forces bottled up for hours if needed. So he settled in, listened to the fight over his comm unit and tried really hard not to fret himself into a heart attack.

 

    “Keith, how are you guys doing over there?” Shiro’s voice was a bit stressed. Keith could hear the intermittent staccato of Lance’s blaster fire and the lower, steady thrum of Hunk’s cannon in the background.

 

    “Pidge ran into a firewall. It’s taking longer than we thought to get in. No sign of guards around here though. I think they’re all with you.”

 

    “Well, isn’t that just so Special!” Lance grunted. “So happy to be able to give you a little vacation. Save me a Mai Thai, wouldja?”

 

    “Lance, pay attention. There’s a group on the left.”

 

    “I got em, boss. Be chill.” 

 

    Keith’s heart raced. It sounded like the team was under heavy fire. He clicked off the transmit button and glanced back into the room. “Pidge?”

 

    “Yeah. I heard. I’m almost in.” Keith frowned at the strain in her voice and risked a longer look at what was going on. Pidge had her laptop plugged into the console and was going back and forth between her keyboard and the Galra control panel. She let out a heavy breath and inserted what appeared to be a portable storage drive into the console.  

 

     “Not downloading to your laptop?” Keith was surprised. Why lug the thing all the way in here if you were going to use a tiny, little, portable storage device the whole time?

 

    “Traps. There are lots of them in here and I don’t want to risk more infection than I have to.  I had no idea this place would be this well protected. You can thank Allura for the fabulous intel.”  She started muttering to herself again and Keith turned his attention back to the hallway.

 

    A few moments later, Pidge let out a yelp. The alarms blared and lights began flashing an ominous, lurid violet. Yelling and cursing flooded the comm channel as Keith spun around.  Pidge was frantically pressing controls. “Shit shit shit… I got this, I can do this. I can get clear. I’ve got…”  A bolt of purple energy writhed across the panel and engulfed her small figure. She shrieked and crumpled to the floor.

 

    “Pidge!” Keith scrambled across the room and pulled her into his arms, checking for a pulse.  It fluttered faintly against his fingers. He gasped in relief. Forgetting that his mike was live, he started rambling as he tried to bring her back to consciousness. “Pidge! Pidge, wake up. Come on, don’t do this to me!”

 

    “Keith! What happened? We’ve got alarms going off and suddenly the drones have all vanished. I suspect they’re heading your way. You need to bug out.” Shiro was shouting over the chaos.

 

    “Pidge got knocked out by a lightning bolt, Shiro. She’s out cold but breathing. Gonna clear out of here. We’ll meet you back at the green lion.” Keith eyed the laptop. It had to come too, Pidge would murder him if he left it behind. He set her limp form down and started yanking wires, closing things up and stuffing them in Pidge’s backpack.  He hesitated before grabbing the flash drive but snatched it out of the control panel and threw it in the bag before zipping it up and slinging it over his back.

 

    “Copy that. Be careful, you’re going to have company on the way back, we’ll try and keep your path as clear as we can but you’re on your own for a bit.”

 

    Yeah, on his own. Burdened with both a heavy backpack and an unconscious partner.  Evaluating the situation, Keith scooped her tiny form up and slung her over his left shoulder.  They were getting out of there one way or another. If luck was on their side he might get most of the way back to the lion before anyone caught up to them. Green lion. His blood chilled. Pidge’s lion. They’d all ridden in with Pidge because of the cloaking device. That could be a problem if she wasn’t awake enough to fly them back out.

 

    Keith cursed.  Get them back to the lion first. Worry about getting the lion out afterwards.

 

    He was almost there. Two corridors to go and he’d be able to join up with the other paladins.  He could hear their gunfire in the distance.  “Almost to you guys,” he panted, “but we may have a problem. Allura? Pidge is unconcious. We may need an extraction or something.”

 

    Her voice crackled over the intercom. “Understood, Keith, do your best.” And that was all. Not reassuring. He was hoping for an actual plan or something.

 

    “Shiro,” he muttered as he hitched Pidge’s form a little higher and cursed the backpack which threw off his balance, “I hope you’ve got something.” A cautious peek around the corner almost netted Keith a singed nose as a Galra plazma burst told him that yes, there were soldiers there. 

This time he toggled his mic on, and with a little urgency, said “Guys! I need backup. Pinned down here.” Carefully he slid Pidge down off his shoulder and set the backpack next to her.  He summoned his shield, took a deep breath and waited for the bad guys to come around the corner. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the beginning of my "Dark Pidge" fiction. My original thought on this was, "Hmm... exactly HOW dark can I make this?"  
> And well, these 14 chapters will bring you the answer.
> 
> Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Please feel free to scream.
> 
>  
> 
> *many thanks to Ollie who is my beta, my validator and my test bunny.


	2. Waking Up Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a disastrous mission where Pidge was knocked unconscious by a bolt of energy from a computer console she had been hacking, Keith and the other paladins managed to get her back to to Castle of Lions and into a healing pod in time. But not all is well...

 

    Pidge was cold. Her breath puffed out in the warm room as she expelled the ice crystals from deep in her lungs. The air burned when she sucked a breath in. She blinked in the painful brightness of the room. It caused spikes behind her eyes and she squinted in an attempt to clear her vision. 

 

_     Where am I _ ? One wobbly step forward, only to trip and barely catch herself on the harsh edge of a healing pod.  _ Oh. The medical bay. _ She shivered in the warm air. She was alone. That was not normal. The paladins always made a point of ensuring no one ever came out of the healing pods without someone there to catch them and give whatever assurances and comfort were needed. If no one was here, then something was wrong. Something was very wrong. That thought chilled her more than the cold air of the pod.  _ What happened? Why am I alone? Did something happen to everyone? Keith! He was with me, is he ok? Did everyone make it back?  _

 

    Moments away from a full-blown panic attack, Pidge scanned the empty room for clues. A couple of rumpled blankets and a discarded bowl of food-goo meant that someone had been here not too long ago. Hers was the only pod active, and a folded blanket had been left by her pod. She picked it up with shaking hands and pulled it around herself. No one else was hurt. Someone had been here. Someone had put her in the pod. Someone had left a blanket. Someone was in the castle so she wasn’t entirely alone.  _ So why aren’t they here? _ Her head hurt and her eyes felt fuzzy. 

 

    On a table by the door, she spotted her flight suit and armor. That was a good place to start. If there was trouble, it was best to be armed. She crossed the room with wobbly steps. Shaking hands made putting the flight suit on more difficult than it needed to be and every buckle on the armor made her want to swear in frustration. Head pounding, and with sweat already dampening the back of her flight suit, Pidge put her helmet on and tuned into the comm channels.

 

    The sudden blast of noise had her cranking the volume down as quickly as she could. Still, she couldn’t help but smile through the pain as she heard familiar voices.

 

    “Lance! Pay attention.” Shiro’s voice was steady, even though the clipped words were filled with his obvious exasperation with the blue paladin.

 

    “Um, I’ve got a couple over here and I could really use a little bit of help, guys.” Hunk, anxious as always, but apparently still in one piece.

 

    “Lance! You idiot, that was me. Watch where you’re aiming!” Relief washed over her. Keith was ok, and Lance was ok too if they were all yelling at him.

 

    She waited for a pause in the overlapping communications and clicked on her mic, “Hey guys, need some help?”

 

    “Pidge?” Lance’s voice was high with excitement,  “Yeah, yeah, come join us! I'll make Keith save a couple for you. He's being really savage today, so you might wanna hurry up!”

 

    “Ooh, hey, you’re awake! We weren't  expecting you for another hour or so.  Bet you're starving. I'll make something for you as soon as we get back in. Shouldn't take long.”

 

    “Pidge. I want you to take it easy. No need for you to come out here. We’re taking care of the last few ships.” Shiro’s voice had that note of urgent concern he used whenever she got hurt. Pidge huffed in irritation. 

 

    “Fine. I'll wait in the common room.” Her tone was unavoidably sour. She clicked off the mic and removed her helmet. Momentarily, she debating the potential pleasure of throwing it across the room against the following need to go and retrieve it afterwards. With a huff, she placed it back on the table.

 

    “So, they don’t need me. Fine. I’ll just go raid the kitchen and find my own way back to bed.” she muttered to herself. Part of her acknowledged that she was being unreasonable but her head hurt, she was in a bad mood and there was no one to give her hurt looks for being an unreasonable bitch so she indulged herself. 

 

    Pidge staggered down the hallway, her legs felt like someone had pulled the bones out and replaced them with green goo. Even worse was the raging headache pounding from the inside of her skull. “Ugh. Why do I feel this way? I was in a healing pod for chrissake! They’re supposed to HEAL _.” _ By the time she got down to the dining room, she felt like utter crap and was too tired to make it to the kitchen. The chair nearest the door caught her exhausted body as she collapsed into it with a grunt.

 

    Pidge looked at her hands. She felt queasy. They had been burned. They looked fine now but she could still feel the numb tingle of that bolt traveling through her body. Shaking, she rested her aching head in her hands and sobbed softly. Why was she crying, anyway? She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She just wanted the headache to go away. Eventually, pain and misery were swaddled away by welcome darkness.

 

\-------------

 

    The anxious group of paladins found her about an hour later. Hunk was the first one to notice her slumped in the chair with her head resting on the table. His broad arm stopped Shiro in the doorway and prevented the others from entering. “Shhh. Here she is. Oooh, it looks like she didn’t make it to the common room. Poor thing, I don’t think she ate anything either.”

 

    “Pidge.” Shiro managed to push past Hunk and knelt down next to the green paladin, passed out at the table. “Hey, wake up honey.” With a worried frown, he put his hand gently on her arm.

 

    “What the heck?” Lance hissed, “How in the world do you get away with calling her stuff like that? She would rip my tongue out through my nose.”

 

    “Don’t worry about it, Lance. She’s dead asleep. There’s a reason her alarm is turned up loud enough to be a fog horn.” Keith’s loud and sarcastic comments were less than welcome and Lance threw him a look filled with disgust. “Hey, don’t give me that look. I should know, I’m only three doors down from her.”

 

    “Knock it off, you two. Hunk, why don’t you get lunch started? I’ll put her to bed and come back to join you.” Shiro scooped the tiny paladin up in his arms. She looked even smaller curled up against his broad chest. Pidge settled in with a frown and a mumble. This was warm, and safe. She sighed and relaxed as she snuggled in against his armor.

 

    “Awwww, so cute! Hold on. I need a picture.”

 

    “Hunk, she will kill you.” Keith was right, of course, but Hunk couldn’t help himself.

 

    “Hey, I need some blackmail prevention material here. Do you have any idea of the sheer quantity of stuff she has over each one of us?” Hunk was already busy clicking away with the camera and managed to get several shots before Shiro turned and walked down the hall, shaking his head.

 

\------------------

  
  


    Pidge woke. She seemed to remember waking before but it was fuzzy. She was warm. Had she been cold before? Her eyes opened to the dim lighting of her own room with the familiar smells of circuits and solder, old socks and stale food-goo. Pidge blinked as she peered into the dim corners, identifying every pile, every piece of tech. Armor? There, in a pile by the door. A neat pile. That was strange, usually it was all over the place. A terrible habit that Shiro and Keith were always nagging her to change. But there it was, in a neat little pile that stood out like a bonfire in the chaos of her room. Well, obviously she hadn’t been the one to pile it like that so someone else had been in her room.

    When? Why? And why couldn’t she remember?  _ Maybe someone doesn’t want me to remember. _ Pidge shook her head against the pillow at that thought. The room rocked alarmingly around her at the movement. With a squeak of protest, she closed her eyes again. Thinking hurt.

 

    The sound of a chair leg scraping a few inches across the floor was muffled against the background noise of the engines, but long familiarity with their noise allowed her to pick it out. A breath of warm air was a deep and weary sigh. One that was familiar. “Shiro?” Her voice was rough and her throat was dry.

 

    The figure slumped in the chair next to her bed stirred and raised his head. The scar across his nose was not as startling as the dark pits under his eyes. “Hey there, we were worried about you. How are you feeling?”

 

    “I feel like shit, thanks. Couldn’t you guys stick me in a healing pod or something when we got back? And where’s Keith? Is everyone OK? Did we get the info back to Allura? Oh God, I hope Keith picked up my laptop. Where’s my laptop? Where’s Keith?” Her eyes being closed against the spinning of the room, Pidge didn’t see the shock and worry surge across Shiro’s face. 

 

    “Pidge, Keith is fine. Everyone is back safe and your laptop is right here in your backpack.” His calm facade back in place, Shiro took her by the chin and tilted her head into the light. Soft, but firmly, he said, “Open your eyes, I need to check them.” She did, whimpering at the brightness. He checked her dilation with a concerned frown. “Pidge, I think you might have a concussion.” He rumpled his fingers through his hair and she thought she heard him mumble something about this being the last thing they needed right now.

 

    “Shiro,” she whispered, “my head hurts. I think we should get me to a med pod.”

 

    “Pidge,” he hesitated, “What’s the last thing you remember?” 

 

    Pidge frowned, she didn’t remember making it to her room.  She remembered being cold, but not why. She remembered the sound of blasters. She remembered being held, but not by whom. She remembered… “I was hacking the system in the Galra Base. Keith was there. Something happened… there was a flash, and I felt like I was burning…” Her breath choked out of her in a sob. “I don’t remember more. There is more, I can’t see it.”

 

    Shiro put his arm around her. “Katie, relax. It’s OK. you're safe. We'll get you well and then we can get things going again for the search. You'll remember.  Give yourself time to rest.”

 

    “Time isn't free, Shiro.” She felt waspish and let him feel the sting of it. “Just stick me in a pod and get me better so I can get back to work.”

    Again he hesitated.  “Katie…”

 

    “Don't call me that, and stop babying me.” Her snappishness was understandable and he tried not to let the words hurt as much as they did.

 

    “Pidge,” his mouth tight with exasperation.  “You were in a healing pod for three days. Look at your hands.” She did. In shock, she saw the faint scars from the electrical burns on her palms. Her hands began to tremble.

 

    Fortunately for both of them, there was a soft rap on the door that disrupted the building tension. It slid open and Keith slipped inside quietly, carrying a tray containing a bowl of food-goo and a couple of water pouches. He paused in the doorway and a smile lit his face when he saw that Pidge was awake. Keith dumped the tray on a nearby, almost-clear corner of a desk and rushed over to the bed, nearly tripping on several pieces of junk in his haste. He knelt down beside the bed frame and Shiro ruefully allowed himself to be pushed to the side.

 

    “Hey. Glad to see you awake.” The relief in his eyes was almost too much for her to bear and she sniffed, looking away.

 

    “Good to see you. You’re OK?”

 

    “Yeah, no problem. It was a bit touch and go, but got you out and we’re all safe back at the castle now. Nothing to worry about.”  His forcibly-cheerful tone was not as convincing as it could have been. She turned her gaze back to him with a level and uncomfortable stare until he looked away.

 

    “I guess I should thank you for getting me out of the control room.”

 

    He turned back and his eyes were blazing. “I would NEVER abandon a teammate.” 

 

    “So, is that tray mine? Or is my room so popular now that we need to eat here?” A change of subject was clearly called for and she grasped at the first one that presented itself.

 

    “Um, yours!” 

 

    Pidge looked at it with distaste. Even from this distance the smell was making her slightly nauseous. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d rather have something of Hunk’s. If he’s willing.”

 

    Shiro laughed, “Yes, I think that could be arranged. I’ll go ask him for you.” He casually gathered up a few empty pouches and plates and piled them on the tray. “Keith, could you give me a hand for a moment? You can bring a tray back for her.” 

 

    “Sure.” Keith knew that hadn’t been a request. And clearly, so did Pidge. The sour look on her face did not bode well for him when he got back. He gave an internal sigh and tried for a reassuring smile. “Hey, I’ll be right back and I’ll stay as long as you want.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged in indifference as they left.

 

\--------

  
  


    “What’s up, Shiro?”  The words were out of his mouth the minute Pidge’s door slid closed behind them. Keith knew the man wouldn’t have pulled him away unless it was something important.

 

    “Do you remember how she called us in the middle of the last battle, after she got out of the pod?” Keith nodded his head and noted the worry on Shiro’s face. “Well, she doesn’t. Doesn’t remember a thing after that electric shock at the base. And while her eyes are dilating properly, she’s got a headache and she’s dizzy.” Shiro led them both down the hallway towards the kitchen.

 

    “Concussion?” Keith’s eyes were wide with concern. They all knew first aid and the symptoms were fairly obvious. “But the pod should have caught that.” He hurried his pace to keep up.

 

    Shiro shook his head. “She doesn’t have one. I checked her with the portable scanner yesterday when I took her to her room.” Keith pondered that as they proceeded to the kitchen. “I’m worried about her, Keith.” Shiro stared at the tray for a long minute after setting it down.

 

    Keith leaned against the counter, took the bowl of goo off the tray and began to eat. He had lied. The tray hadn’t been for her, she hadn’t been awake to eat anything for several meals. It was actually his lunch and he was taking the opportunity to scarf it down. Between bites, he asked questions. “Could she have hit her head while we were in the battle?” The simple fact that they’d all been busy when her pod opened, while unavoidable, was just something that made all of them feel horrible. That was just one of the things they did. You go into a pod with your friends supporting you, and your friends are there to support you when you come out. Pidge hadn’t had that and there was no way they could make that up to her… whether she remembered it or not.

 

    “I don’t think so. Portable scanner, remember?” 

    Keith was silent while Shiro disposed of the old food containers he had gathered up out of Pidge’s room. Honestly, how could she live like that? His mind wandered back to the image of Pidge being engulfed by glowing energy before being thrown across the control room and hitting the far wall. “Do you think that purple lightning had something to do with it? I mean, electricity can do some really strange things to your system.”

 

    Shiro clutched onto that possibility like a lifeline. “Yes, that might be it. Maybe it will pass. Maybe it’s nothing to worry about.” He let out a long breath. “In any case, I don’t think we should tell her about what went on during the time she’s missing. At least, not for a while, if there’s any hope of her getting those memories back, I don’t want to color them.” Keith frowned as he slurped up the last of his lunch. Obviously, Shiro was still dwelling on how helpless they had been during their last mission.

 

    “Well,” Keith said, “I suppose this means I won't have to worry about her getting revenge for slapping her.” Shiro’s chuckle was weak but at least it was something. That had not been an easy withdrawal from the base.

 

\---------

 

    “Pidge, wake up.” Shiro had taken her from Keith’s arms once they had gained the relative safety of the green lion’s cockpit. Cushioning her, he had slid down the wall until she was cradled in his lap. The horror on the black paladin’s face only made Keith’s own guilt deeper. His brain told him there was no way he could have protected her, but his gut was screaming at him that he should have found a way. 

 

    They all felt protective of Pidge, so much so that she was often screaming at them for smothering her. Shiro, though, felt that need to safeguard her on an entirely different level from the rest of them. It was difficult watching him lose his cool and calm demeanor over her pale face. 

 

    Hands shaking, Shiro had been unable to remove her helmet and finally, Keith had been forced to push his hands aside to get it off. Shiro had barely acknowledged his assistance as he was caressing her hair and cheeks. “C’mon honey.  Wake up. Katie, I need you to wake up.” It tore Keith’s heart to hear Shiro’s voice break like that.

 

    Keith knelt down on the floor next to them, clutching Pidge’s helmet and thinking hard. He could hear Lance and Hunk down in the open mouth of the lion, still firing their bayards, still holding back the Galra drones and soldiers. The team had managed to get to him and Pidge in time and they had all gotten back to the green lion, but without Pidge to pilot it out of there, they were still in trouble.

    “Guys, if you can wake Pidge up, we need to get out of here and sooner would be better than later!” Hunk yelled up the corridor to them. His cannon thrummed with another burst.

 

     Keith’s lips pursed in a hard line. This wasn’t getting them anywhere.  Desperate times called for decisive measures. He pulled off his glove and before Shiro could react, he slapped Pidge across the face. Hard. Twice. Shiro rumbled in protest but Keith ignored him and kept his attention focused on her face. 

 

    He also ignored the two bright red spots appearing on her cheek in the shape of his palm. He’d feel bad about that later. If they lived. 

 

    Her little gasp of breath gave him a burst of hope and he gripped her chin as her eyes fluttered open.  They didn’t focus, but that wasn’t the goal. “Pidge!” he yelled at her, “Tell Green to take off NOW! Tell her to get us back to the castle.”  

 

    Tears were forming in her eyes, he could see her trying to focus. “Tell Green to take us home, Pidge. Take us home. Get us safe.” He kept at it, badgering her until he saw a flicker of understanding.  Her hand dropped to the floor panels and her eyes closed. A little furrow formed between her brows  as she tried to concentrate.  

 

    A startled yelp came from Hunk, echoing alongside Lance’s whoop as Green closed her mouth and stood. Lance and Hunk joined the others in the cockpit as Pidge slipped back into unconsciousness. It was all right though, Green was getting them out of there and as soon as she was clear, the lion reactivated the cloak for the return to the castle.

 

\-----

 

    Keith winced internally. He really would rather she didn’t remember that part of their adventure. Still, the memory loss was a very real concern. 

 

    “Hey, Shiro. Why don’t you heat up some of that soup that Hunk saved from last night. I’ll take it and get some fluids into her. That should help the headache.” The relief on Shiro’s face made his heart ache for the man. Often, they forgot that the scarred leader was only a few years older than the rest of them and shouldered far more responsibility on his own than any man should.

 

    Five minutes later, Keith was on his way back to Pidge’s room with a new tray.

 

_____

  
  
  


    Pidge watched the door slide closed behind the two paladins with a sense of simultaneous relief and dread.  And now she was alone.  _ Again _ . Wait, had she been alone before?

 

_Well, isn’t that special? Guess they don’t really care. If they did, someone would have been there._ Been where? Wait, that was a completely ridiculous thought. Of course they cared. Someone had tucked her into bed. Who? Pidge groaned. Her head hurt. _Well, they’re probably off talking about me right now. Deciding what I should and should not know._ That was such an irritating thought that her headache actually faded while she considered it. Ridiculous, no one could ever keep her from finding out what she wanted to know. The Garrison had tried. More than once. She had found everything, and then some.

 

    Keith had salvaged her backpack and equipment. Hopefully he’d grabbed that flash drive as well. If not...  Well, as soon as she was feeling better she would go through it, decode the data and hopefully this time the information would give them the location of her missing family members. Oh, and the information on munition supply routes that Allura had wanted. 

 

    But, right now all she wanted to do was rest until the headache went away. Three days in a pod… why didn’t she remember getting back to her room? 

 

    The memory lapse terrified her in a way nothing else would. Only Hunk had a memory better than hers. It was one of the things that made her special and if she was losing that it would cripple the team. She would end up being just a girl in a big robot. She wasn’t fast or steady or large or even cheerfully optimistic. She was the smart one, the clever one. If she didn’t have that, if she’d lost her ability to think and reason, she would only be some silly girl for them to protect. A liability.

 

    She sat in the dark while the self-doubt ate at her, struggling to patch the holes in her mind.

 

\--------

 

    A short tap on the door and it slid open. Keith was back to distract her from the painful thoughts in her head. Unfortunately he brought painful light with him. She pulled the blankets up higher and whimpered.

 

    “Hey, sorry about that. I’ve got some stuff that may help.” The door slid closed behind him and the welcome dimness returned. Keith worked his way across the room and set the tray down on the nightstand. It was a close fit with all the clutter. 

 

    “What do you have? Is it a sledgehammer? If it is, please use it on my head now. I’m begging you.” The muffled tones coming from under the blanket sounded absolutely serious.

 

    Keith chuckled. Her pain was real and it wasn’t funny but at the same time, he couldn’t help it. She sounded so much like Lance at the moment. “No, nothing that drastic. Just some soup that Hunk made and a lot of water. You’re probably just really dehydrated.”

 

    Something that sounded vaguely like “Don’t want any.” came from under the covers. 

 

    Keith looked around the room, searching for something that would pull her out from under the blankets. His eyes rested on the backpack he’d hauled all the way back for her.“I hope I didn’t ruin your laptop.”

 

    The covers on the bed flew off and Keith pulled back in alarm as she struggled into a sitting position. “What the HELL, Keith? What did you do to my laptop?”

 

    He reached out with one hand, balancing the tray with the other, both to ward off her rage and steady her shaking form. She might be weak as a kitten, but he still didn’t want to feel her metaphorical teeth. Her tongue was sharp enough no matter her physical condition. “Easy. I did my best not to ruin anything. I was yanking wires out of the console end and not the laptop. I just stuffed everything into the bag, hoping you’d be able to sort it out later.” _ If you were alive to fix it. _ “I was a little bit more concerned over my friend who was laying on the other side of the room with her hands fried and her head bleeding.” His voice was taking on a defensive tone. “I’d think you’d be glad I remembered the damn computer at all.”

 

    Sullen, she pulled back her temper and fought for a little control. “Yes, you’re right.” She ran shaking fingers through the tangle of her hair and made a face at the greasy texture. “I’m sorry, Keith. Thank you for grabbing it.” She hated apologizing. 

 

    Keith nodded his acceptance and let the subject drop. That had been more gracious than he had expected under the circumstances. He took her hand and pressed a water pouch into it. “Drink this, ok?” She made a face and tried to push it away. He tightened his grip and wrapped her fingers around it until she squeaked in protest. “I will not answer a single question until this is empty.” Ultimatum delivered, he sat back in the chair and crossed his arms while she gaped at him for his betrayal.

 

    “Ugh. you wouldn’t.” He raised his eyebrow and smirked. She glared at him. “You would,”  _ Traitor. _ “You stubborn, shaggy-haired ingrate, I hope your mullet catches on fire.” Her ire shifted between him and the water pouch as she slowly and deliberately sucked it dry. 

 

    Keith could only imagine what she was thinking. Unfortunately his imagination was good enough to come up with a dozen likely scenarios, none of them good for his health.

Pidge threw the empty container at a far corner and blithely ignored the fact that it only made it halfway, sitting like a silent accusation of weakness in the middle of the room.

 

    “There. It’s empty. Now talk.”

 

    Keith hesitated, “I’m not supposed to tell you very much. They say if you have memory loss it could affect your recovery.”

 

    “You will, though.” She was terribly smug about it.

 

    “Yeah.” He took a breath and handed her another water pouch.  She snorted and took a sip from the straw. “Mostly because you were out cold for all of this so it won’t matter.”  He paused for a few moments and she let him gather his thoughts. 

    “There was a power surge or something while you were hacking into the Galra system. You had set off an alarm and were trying to back out of the system when it happened. It shocked you and knocked you unconscious. I got you back to your lion, we woke you up long enough for you to tell it to bring us back to the castle and then you passed out again.”

    That was really, really brief. He was obviously leaving some details out. She scowled. Keith paused pointedly until Pidge took another sip from the water pouch. Obnoxious. “When we got back to the castle, you were barely breathing and had electrical burns on both your hands.” He was reciting the facts in a monotone now. Pidge’s temper cooled a bit, she could tell this upset him. “Coran stuffed you in a healing pod as fast as he could. You were in there for three days.” His voice had fallen to little more than a whisper. “We waited. We took turns waiting, you know how it is.” She did. 

_     And yet, they left me alone. I was alone. _ That was...right? The memory hovered, just out of reach and fuzzy. “Then what?”

    Keith looked away. “I’m sorry, can’t tell you any more than that.”

    “Can’t, or won’t?” Her temper rose again.

    Her peevishness was starting to get on his nerves. “What the hell does that mean?” This was not going the way he had intended.

    “What the hell do you think it means? It means I think you’re lying to me. It means I think you’ve got some sort of secret about me waking up. Maybe it has something to do with my headache, maybe it has something to do with my missing memory, maybe you’re conducting some experiment on me and I’m just your fucking Guinea Pig! It sounds like you’re giving me a fucking cover-up story. Just like Iverson did.  Like the fucking Garrison did! All of you, just trying to keep me in the dark!” 

    “Ok, that’s it. I’m out of here. I don’t deserve that.” Of all the things for her to fling in his face, that was just… low. Keith was just as much of a victim of the Garrison’s propaganda story as she was. Stiffly, Keith stood and turned to leave. His voice was cold and hid the pain, “When you remember what it’s like to act like a human being, you’ll know where to find me.”  

    The door closed behind him and left her alone again. Her frustrated scream echoed in the tiny room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, here we go. Not my favorite chapter but I did my best to make it interesting in part.
> 
> Strangely enough, while I wrote this story, I found more and more of it wanting to be told from Keith's POV instead of Pidge's. So, while this story IS about Pidge, it's also about the others and how her situation affects them. 
> 
> I wonder if she'll ever find out about those pictures Hunk took... and if he'll survive when she does.


	3. “Well, why didn’t you?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pain begins.  
> Truth comes out.  
> Even more misunderstandings.  
> Grab your tissues.

    Pidge flung the remains of her water pouch after the red paladin and ground her teeth in frustration when it hit the closing door instead of him. Keith had set the soup just out of easy reach or it would have followed right after. Keith, of all people, keeping things from her. They had spent hours whispering together in the evenings about various government cover-ups. It was one of the things they had in common. She never thought he would actually lie to her.  _ Well, he did _ . That felt like a horrible betrayal right now.

 

    Tears welled up, she fought them down. She pumped them into the building rage that was simmering inside her. Directionless and indiscriminate, it curled around her guts. The kind of anger that, if you didn’t feed it with your disappointment in others, would fuel itself on your own self-doubt.

 

    Pidge wanted to vent. She wanted to lash out. She wanted to cry. She wanted to curl up in her father’s lap and let him take all the bad things and make them go away like he always did when she was a little girl. But that wasn’t going to happen. That would never happen again. The Galra had taken that away from her when they had captured the expedition on Kerebos. 

 

    Pidge’s eyes drifted to the backpack lying on the floor next to her desk. She wanted her missing family, she wanted the truth. Sometimes, there was only one way to do that, find it for yourself.  _ Find it myself. _  Her eyes narrowed.  _ Yessss.. _ Everything in her focused on that backpack. 

 

    She crawled out of bed and dragged her wobbly self across the room to snag it and drag it back to her nest of sheets and blankets. She pulled everything out in a large lump of twisted cables. It was a mess. The one bright point was the little flash drive that dropped out of the chaos and sat blinking with a purple light on her comforter. As she had expected, the other gear inside was a complete disaster. Carefully she untangled cords, reseated cables and after about an hour, was able to boot her system back up. 

 

    It crashed. 

    Cursing Keith and his ham-handed handling of her precious equipment, Pidge settled in for the long haul and put thoughts of conspiracies, resentment and her team aside. The computer, the problem, and the solution became her focus and she settled herself into a familiar refuge.

 

\-------

 

    It took Pidge almost an entire day to get her laptop back in working order. 

After the second person stopped in, just to check on her, Pidge put a sign up on her door and was finally left in blissful peace. 

 

    Pidge fiddled with the flash drive fob, rolling it over and over between her fingers. It almost seemed to hum in her fingers. Heaving a sigh, she finally plugged the flash drive into place and started the decryption program. Probably just another dead end in the endless quest for her family. It was getting to the point where even her stubborn insistence on them still being alive was starting to fade. She left the program to do its thing and looked around the room for the first time in at least 12 hours. Ugh.

 

    Soon, the cold bowl of soup was empty, the more offensive-smelling piles of debris had been dealt with and Pidge was feeling more herself after a shower and clean clothes. She considered unlocking the door and removing the sign on it that said, “I’m alive. Go away.”

_ Nah. leave it up. If they get worried enough, they can have Allura drag her princessy butt down here and override the door locks.  _

 

    A little while later, a growl from her stomach changed her mind. It was time to go find something more substantial than emergency ration bars, even if it was only green goo.

 

\------

 

    “So, Keith, what did the two of you talk about? You seem rather upset.”

 

    Keith dug into his bowl of sloppy, green stuff. Some days even imagining it as pudding didn’t help. Today was one of those days. “Nothing.” short, sweet and fairly accurate. “And that’s why she’s pissed, thanks.” Even six hours on the training deck hadn’t been able to take the sting out of what she had said or calm him down, or even distract him.

 

    Lance scoffed, “Oh come on. You two talk about everything. She’s the worst gossip in the world and you’re the most gullible schmuck there is. She probably got everything out of you and you didn’t even realize it.”

 

    “Everything?” Keith was dumbstruck. “EVERYTHING? I didn’t tell her anything more than the briefest bits of what happened!” His fist hit the table and the spoon in his bowl went flying. He stood and leaned menacingly over the table. “In fact, let's talk about what I didn’t say.”

 

    He skewered Lance with his gaze, “I didn’t tell her that you haven’t cracked a joke since the moment she went in that pod, or how you’ve been crying in your sleep. Yeah. I know about that.” His gaze shifted across the table.

 

    “I didn’t tell her how Shiro had a breakdown right after we stuffed her in a healing pod and how Hunk literally held his hand for three days.” There was no stopping him, the flood of range and hurt was pouring out, unfortunately directed at a wide-eyed Lance.

 

    “I didn’t tell her that Hunk has burned every single thing he’s tried to cook this week and so we’ve been living off of food-goo.” He also didn’t mention that Hunk had just plain stopped eating because the anxiety was so bad he couldn’t keep anything down. His voice was breaking and he didn’t even care.

 

    “I didn’t tell her that we’re all a bunch of zombies because none of us can sleep for worrying about whether she’d ever wake up, or how the guilt of letting her get hurt is eating me alive. I didn’t tell her that or any of the other dozen horrible things that have been going on since she was struck by purple, fucking, lightning!”  That was the point where he ran down and simply stood there, fists clenched with his breath jackhammering in and out of his chest.

 

    No one looked at him. No one disputed his words. How could they? Every one of them was true. 

 

    Then, when he didn’t think it could get any worse the other shoe dropped.

 

    “Well, why didn’t you?” Pidge’s soft voice was harsh and ragged and ripped through Keith’s gut like a serrated dagger. He spun around to see her leaning against the doorframe, her mouth pinched in pain and anger, her legs shaking. Stubborn idiot, she wasn’t even supposed to be out of bed. “Why didn’t you tell me, Keith?” The quiet accusation in her voice was more than he could stand.

 

    “Pidge…” 

What could he say? He was never good with words to begin with. At least not comforting ones. Still, he stepped towards her, he would try.

 

    She stopped him with her hand. “No. Don’t bother. You were trying to ‘protect’ me. I get it.” Her voice was a soft wheeze but it was clear in the silent room. Everyone’s eyes had shifted to her. No one could possibly refute any of the things that had been overheard. She ignored the pain in five pairs of eyes and focused on Keith alone. “You can’t, you know. Well, you can, but is the price worth it? You know the price, and so you know the answer to that.” She gave him the most disappointed look he had ever seen on anyone’s face. “I really thought you, of all people, would always be straight with me.”

 

    Having Galra soldiers rip the heart from his chest could not hurt as much as those words. Pidge turned around and walked back down the hallway towards her room again. Keith watched her with hands clenched and white-knuckled. Leaving his half-eaten dinner, he spun on his heels and took his pain back to the training deck. No one spoke, or tried to stop him.

 

\-----------

 

    Pidge leaned against the wall in her room as she let the door slide closed behind her. It wasn’t the first time she wished the doors in this place were slammable. Her head hurt again and the decryption was still running. Nothing to do but wait.

 

    She pulled another nutrient bar out of the stash behind her headboard, slipping her journal back in place when it fell out of the cubby. There was just no way she was going back to the kitchen to find something to eat as long as anyone was still awake. She didn’t want to talk to any of them right now.

 

    Still, she needed something to do while the program ran. Idly she toyed with some of the Altean systems. She started flipping through the castle’s camera feeds _. I wonder if I can find the recordings for the time period I can’t remember.  _ It was worth a try.

 

    While searching, Pidge came across a live feed of Allura and Shiro in the control room. She turned up the volume, knowing she was eavesdropping and doing it anyhow.

 

    “Will Pidge be able to return to duty soon?” Allura asked, “How much longer need do you think? We need to be able to get back out in the field. There are planets that need us, and Voltron.”  Allura looked tired and worried. Pidge felt a burning disappointment. They were only concerned about her value to the team. 

 

    Shiro stood close to her and in a strained voice, replied,  “Until she’s ready, we’ll manage without her.” Well, that didn’t sound much like Keith’s tirade earlier.  _ More lying. Someone is lying. _ Pidge felt sour. She flipped to a different camera feed, not wanting to hear any more.

 

    Shiro leaned against the Altean Princess, “Allura, I don’t care about Voltron right now. I just want Pidge to be ok. It hurts. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t bring them all back home and make them happy again. What’s the point in saving the whole universe if my friends aren’t in it with me?” His voice broke. No one was there to see Allura wrap her arms around him and let him cry.

 

    “As long as we’re together, we’ll be strong enough.” Allura’s words were the only comfort Shiro had.

 

\--------

 

    Sweaty and tired after an hour of intense battle, Keith continued to rip through the practice drones, taking out his fury on them. A movement near the door caught the corner of his eye. Long familiarity allowed him to label it as non-threatening and once he had a moment to glance in that direction, he was able to identify it as Lance. It wasn’t the first time one of the other paladins had watched him during his workouts, and while they usually used the observation deck, occasionally they came directly into the training room. It was safe enough as long as they kept their eyes open for flying debris, the drones were always focused on him. 

Keith grunted and took out his current opponent with a particularly vicious strike to the torso. This gladiator might have to be scrapped, Keith twisted his sword as he withdrew it with extra force.

 

    Lance winced. Confronting his fellow paladin might not be a good idea at this time. But really, when was there a good time for backing Keith into a corner about his feelings? 

 

    “Start next level,” Keith panted.

 

    “Override. End simulation.”

 

    Keith whirled on him, jaw clenched. He hated that Coran had programmed it so that anyone in the castle could override his orders on the training deck, “For your own good.” More than that, he hated knowing that it was sometimes necessary.

 

    “Let’s go talk, you’re going to hurt yourself if you keep this up.” The blue paladin stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the doorway. “Are you still upset about this morning?”

 

    Lance was the last, the very last, person he wanted to confide in. Still, he was there and Keith knew he needed to get this out before it festered into something ugly. “I can’t believe I said all that stuff to you guys. I just blurted it all out, and I know it’s all stuff you were trying to keep to yourselves.” Lance handed him a towel and Keith hid his burning face in it for a while.

 

    “Yeah, but since we all knew about it, it was kinda stupid for us to be trying to pretend the problem didn’t exist. You didn’t do anything to hurt us more than we were already hurting ourselves.” 

 

    Keith stared at the towel in his hand. “Lance,” he hesitated  “are you ok?” 

 

    “No.” That bald, simple statement expressed everything.  

Lance sighed gustily. “No, Keith. I’m not ok. None of us are. But, back at the base, seeing you pelting down that corridor with Pidge over one shoulder and your shield held over your back... that scared the shit out of me.” Lance scuffed his toe on the floor, “I knew. I knew you were counting on me to pick them off before they got you. I just wanted to grab Hunk’s bayard and mow those bastards down by the dozens. It wasn’t enough to just pick them off one at a time.”  the suppressed rage in his voice matched the pain Keith felt inside himself. 

 

    He remembered the look on Lance’s face. “You were afraid you’d hit us, weren’t you?”  Lance nodded stiffly. Keith reached over and grabbed his shoulder. “I’m glad you were there. I could feel my shield shorting out. Hunk isn’t known for his accuracy and we were too far away for Shiro to get to us before my shield collapsed.”  Keith took a deep breath. He was shaking. “You were the only one that could have saved us, Lance. Thank you.”

 

    Lance’s voice was choked. “I didn’t think I could, but then you started that weaving pattern you use all the time in practice and it just clicked. I knew where you were going to be and I was able to time my shots.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “I can’t believe it worked.”

 

    Keith gripped his shoulder, trying to put all the confidence he could into it. “I can. You are the best shot I have ever seen. I knew you wouldn’t let us down and Lance, you were awesome.”

 

    Blue eyes sparked back into life and strained lips twitched into a tiny smile, “Yeah. I was. Glad you noticed. Wish I had that confession on tape so I could replay it for the others.”

 

    Keith snorted. “Never happened.”  Lance laughed and punched him in the arm. Keith grinned and snaked his towel into a whip. They both ended up in a play-battle, laughing like lunatics releasing the tensions of weeks.

  
    Pidge, observing the two laughing, flicked to a different camera feed.  _ Keith has a new friend. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but I hope the intensity makes up for it.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed Lance and Keith's bonding moment.   
> Lance is very deserving of appreciation.
> 
> Pidge, well... she's got issues.


	4. Betrayal in the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge finds more evidence that her "friends" are deceiving her. Mysterious messages buried inside code.

    Pidge sat on the edge of her bed, wallowing in misery. Her friend had been lying to her. Now he was laughing with Lance, even though he knew her feelings had been hurt. He hadn’t shown up, pounding on her door, demanding that she talk to him. He had just left her alone.  _ They’re always leaving me alone. _ Allura and Shiro were just waiting for her to be well enough to fight again. Even Hunk, bearer of comfort food and hugs, hadn’t once dropped a tray of tempting treats outside her door. Hunk never forgot. Even if she was so deep in a project that she didn’t hear someone knocking at her door, he would still leave a tray for her to find. Apparently even Hunk had abandoned her.

 

\-----

 

    Hunk was in equal misery. He was fanning smoke towards the kitchen vent and lamenting the loss of yet another batch of cookie ingredients. “Man, I can’t believe I forgot to set the timer on the oven, Coran.” The older Altean wisely said nothing, and simply scraped the charred bits off the pan and into the recycler, again. 

 

    A tremor ran through the floorboards. Coran and Hunk both looked at each other, eyes wide. Coran’s ears twitched as the castle’s engines ramped up in power. “A wormhole jump?”

 

    “Uh, didn’t we jump to a new, secret system this morning, Coran?”

 

    “Yes, yes we did.” Coran looked worried. “I am sorry, Paladin, I must go check with the princess and find out why we are changing locations.”

 

    Hunk looked at the mess in the kitchen and sighed. “I’ll go with you.”

 

\-----

 

    Allura stood at the control podium, face tight with tension. Shiro stood behind her with a matching expression. The coursucating colors of the wormhole transit swirled around them as they watched the transition through the observation windows.

Hunk paused to watch the beautiful colors in awe as Coran hurried forward, “Princess, what happened? Is there an emergency?”

 

    “My apologies, Coran. I should have alerted you. I spotted an incoming Galra fleet on the sensors. Nothing to worry about, but since we’re down a paladin I determined that it would be better to relocate rather than tempt a confrontation. We’ll keep an eye on things for a while.” 

 

    Coran and Hunk smiled in relief, so many things had gone wrong lately, at least this time it wasn’t serious. “Well, we’ll be going back and make dinner then.”

 

\-----

 

*ping*

 

    Pidge’s head jerked up at the sound. The cursor on her computer screen was blinking. The program had run its course. After a deep breath, she shook off her dark inner musings and pulled herself over to the desk to check on the results. 

 

    Thirty minutes later and she was still staring at the screen in confusion. “What. The. Quiznack?”

The decryption program should have decoded all the secured Galaran transmissions as well as translating them into English when possible. Pidge had been learning Galran as well as Altean but it was still faster for the computer to translate them for her. Well, that part of the program seemed to be working. However, the translated information just didn’t make any sense at all. Uneasily,  Pidge ran the data through the castle’s Altean system as well. Perhaps it was the Earth tech at fault.

 

    No. An hour later she had her answer. An answer that left her with more questions than she had started with. The two data sets were not the same. 

 

    The Altean set had the usual gaps that Pidge had come to expect from parsing Galra communications. Missing files that simply didn't translate into something their computers understood. Perfectly normal. The set from her laptop's decryption was a much smoother and more uniform set of data. Almost no gaps at all.

 

    With nervous hands she tagged the files that were discrepancies and pulled them out to examine them.

 

    She slowly fit the messages together like pieces of a puzzle, and a frightening picture full of questions began to emerge.  

 

**The champion was captured and brainwashed.  He leads for her now…**

_ Shiro. Why would the Galra complain about him being brainwashed? _

 

**Bad enough they found the lions’ hiding places…**

_ Yeah, we found them first. But, this implies the Galra hid them? _

 

**Locate the missing humans.**

_ The only humans that are missing are my family. Don’t the Galra have them? _

 

**Starting new sector search...**

_ Searching for what? Humans? _

 

**She has them well-stashed.**

_ She. Is that Allura? Who does she have stashed? _

 

**Champion was loyal.**

_ Champion hated your furry purple butts. Didn’t he? _

 

**Conniving Alteans…**

_ Pot to kettle... black, much? _

 

**Rescue the Humans, the truth will come out.**

_ Another odd message about humans. What truth? _

 

    Digging deeper into the files, Pidge came across reports. Many of them were strings of search patterns, several sectors worth. The object of the search was not specified but it was certainly thorough. Must have been important for them to spend so much time on it.

 

_     The messages were about searching for humans. Why would the Galra search for humans they already have? Do they NOT have them? Who does, then? Maybe they’re searching for something else. _

 

    Uneasily, Pidge flagged the reports for later examination. Perhaps the locations could give a hint as to the search object.  Anything the Galara spent that much time trying to find would be something Allura would be interested in as well.

_ Unless she already knows. _

 

    One report in particular caught her attention. It was buried deep and surprisingly, she was able to extract it almost intact. It lead to many questions.

 

**I regret to inform the Sector Commander of the failure of the Black Raid mission.**

**Please see attached documents with the tally of lost manpower and equipment.**

 

**The 7th fleet stationed itself within the AR-17-B-3 star system. Distress beacon was deployed and the Altean rebels appeared within the expected time frame. All 5 lions were present, with the human paladins. Standard tactical deployments were used and the lions were successfully separated.**

 

**Unfortunately, the humans were quick to adapt and the time of separation was insufficient to retrieve the Champion from his craft. The remaining 4 lions quickly regrouped and chased off or destroyed our forces. When our numbers dropped below the minimum required for success, I made the decision to withdraw.**

**In the future, I believe the Champion will be more closely guarded by the other paladins. The humans are highly adaptable and clever. All attempts to retrieve the Black Paladin for deprogramming have failed up to this point. The Altean brainwashing is too strong for us to appeal to him directly and he has convinced the others of his team that we are the enemy.**

 

**All five paladins seem to be firmly under the sway of the Altean Rebels. They use the Voltron unit to attack and ravage peaceful settlements of the Empire under the premise of “liberating” them. The Alteans use this tactic often to bully the populations into resupplying their rebel efforts.**

 

**I find it hard to swallow that the traitorous Alteans have caused this much trouble since finding 3 aliens on a chunk of ice in a strange solar system. However, the truth must be faced at this point. They have become more than a mere nuisance to the Empire and new steps will need to be taken.**

 

**I recommend that we investigate alternative plans regarding the paladins. Separation and retrieval is costly in both manpower and materials. As much as the Imperial party would like to keep the Voltron Unit intact for our own usage, eradication may be the more effective method after all.**

 

**Vrepit Sa.**

**Latronik, Commander, 7th fleet.**

 

    Pidge took a moment to cross-reference a star chart and confirm the system in question. Yes. The Galra had been most insistent on trying to separate them all. They had gone after the black lion in particular. But why Shiro? “Deprogramming. Altean brainwashing.”  Pidge re-read that and shivered. What in the world did that mean? The only Alteans were Coran and Allura. 

_ As far as I know. _

 

_ Shiro, Altean Brainwashing. _

_     Loyal Champion, brainwashed. _

_ Her Leader. _

_     Retrieve the black paladin for deprogramming. _

  
  


    But, it was the sentence farther down that really caught her attention. 

“the traitorous Alteans have caused this much trouble since finding 3 aliens on a chunk of ice in a strange solar system”

 

_     The ALTEANS found 3 aliens. _

_ Kerebos. Alteans, not Galra.  _

_     Locate the missing humans. _

_ Search patterns. _

_     She has them well stashed. _

Pidge was not the only one searching for her missing family. 

 

_ Conniving Alteans. _

_     Two different sets of data. _

_ Holes in the Altean set. _

_     Someone is lying to me. _

 

    Pidge set up a secure and undetectable communications channel. She would find the answers she was looking for.

 

_     Yes… _

  
    She ignored the knocking at her locked door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my. What IS the truth?  
> Is Allura the secretive, conniving manipulator the data suggests?  
> Are the paladins just pawns?
> 
> Next chapter will see Keith and Pidge get at it.


	5. Making Amends, and Breaking Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fight!  
> And the paranoia level increases...  
> Something is gonna break loose soon around here.

    After parting from Lance, Keith took a very long and hot shower. He thought things over long and hard. He dried off, dressed and left his room with a new determination to make things right between him and the green paladin.

 

    He went back to her room and tapped on the door. “Pidge?” He waited but there was no answer. “Hey, I just wanted to apologize.”

 

    There was no answer from inside the room but he took a deep breath and continued on, “I'm really sorry If you felt I wasn't being honest with you. I just want you to be safe, and sometimes that might mean I do things you won't like.” This was much harder than he thought it would be. “I'm your friend, and I want you to know I will always have you back, no matter what.” He sighed and let his hand drop from where it had been resting on the door. “I'll see you in the morning, then. Good night, Pidge.”

 

\--------

 

    The next morning,  Keith was back. The same silent door with the same note saying, “I'm alive. Go away.”

 

    There was an untouched tray on the ground with a bowl of food-goo and two of the cookies that Keith knew were from Hunk’s private hoard.

 

    So, Hunk had been by at some point and had also been ignored. That was slightly concerning. “Pidge,” he shouted as he knocked loudly on the door, “Wake up. Breakfast. Come on out and join us. I'll make sure Lance doesn't eat all the good stuff.” Still silence. Worried,  Keith pounded harder.

 

    Pidge groaned, there was a pounding in her head and a keyboard impression on her face. She blinked bleary eyes and scrubbed sleep out of them with one hand. The lights were brighter than the last time she noticed them, it must be the castle’s day cycle. “Serves me right for staying up all night.” The throbbing in her head held an odd counterpoint and it took her several long moments to register the sound AS a sound and that it was coming from her door. Someone was yelling her name. Loudly.  _ They should just go away. _

 

    She threw a chunk of tech at the door and in the momentary lull after it hit, she hollered, “I'm awake, I'm alive and I'm getting pissed off! Go away!”

 

    Keith felt a hiccup deep in his chest at hearing her voice. An odd little flutter just knowing she hadn't disappeared in the night. He paused for a moment and considered… should he push for her to come out, or would it be more productive to negotiate? 

 

    “Fine. I'll leave you alone on two conditions. One, you will pick up this tray of food that Hunk left and eat it. Two, you will come out and join us for lunch. Deal?” He gave her a good two minutes to consider counting slowly the whole time. “I swear, if you don't agree, I will talk Allura into letting Hunk test that new blowtorch of his on this door!”

 

    Faintly, he heard an exasperated scream from the other side, “Yes! Fine! I agree. Just let me sleep in peace.”

 

    “Come out and pick up this tray first. I'll be back in 15 minutes and if it's still here, the next thing you hear will sound a lot less like me and a lot more like a plasma cutter.”

 

    With that, he went to join the other paladins in the dining room for breakfast, feeling like he'd won a little.

 

\-----------

 

    The air around the table was decidedly on the gloomy side. That in itself showed how upset everyone was over Pidge, because Hunk had managed to produce a decent breakfast without burning it and no one looked at all pleased. Keith started humming to himself as he scooped various oddly-colored things onto his space-tortilla, as Lance called them. They were, in essence, the standard castle goo thickened with a type of flour and fried. Hunk really was a genius.  

 

    Odd looks were shot at him for his cheerful mood. 

 

    “I spoke with Pidge this morning.”

 

    Hunk visibly perked his ears and the other two paladins also left off their half-hearted eating to give him their full attention.

 

    “Did she eat? I mean, you know, was the tray still there?”

 

    Keith shook his head a little and Hunk drooped again. “No, but I did get her to promise to eat it. I told her we'd break down her door if the tray was still there at lunch time.”

 

    All three heaved a collective sigh of relief and returned their attention to their food. The air at the table lightened a few degrees except in one corner. Something about Shiro caught Keith’s attention and he kept an eye on the black paladin as he told Hunk and Lance about his odd negotiation in the hallway. 

 

    Shiro was making a show of eating but the amount of food on his plate never noticeably decreased. The shadows under his eyes were deeper. The lines of strain were more pronounced. Shiro looked exhausted. And not in the usual  Shiro-survives-on-half-the-sleep-of-others and has-twice-the-responsibility exhausted. This was more like the haunted twitchiness he had shown just after his escape. Something was up and  Shiro was trying to hide it.

 

    Keith sat his tray down next to the man and his concern ramped up another notch when Shiro visibly jumped and dropped his fork. “Hey,” he said in a soothing voice, “It’s just me.” Keith sat down. Shiro picked his fork back up but he did not relax. “Bad dreams?” Keith took a bite of breakfast as Shiro rearranged his plate again. 

 

    Shiro sighed and the fork paused. “No. Haven’t really slept enough to dream.”

 

    “You worried about Pidge?” Which, on reflection, Keith admitted was probably the stupidest and most obvious thing he could have said at the time.

 

“Well, yes. But that’s not it.” Shiro laid his fork on the plate and gave up the pretense of eating. He ran both fingers through his short hair and huffed before pulling together a supposedly-reassuring smile and saying, “Nothing for you to worry about. I’m sure things will be fine. Good job talking to her this morning. We’ll see if your strategy works.” 

 

    Keith gave Shiro back one of his own patented looks. The ‘I know you’re bullshitting me’ deadpan stare.

 

    Shiro rolled his eyes. “Really, Keith. It’s nothing you can help with. The stress this week has got my mind playing tricks with me. I can handle it.”

 

    “Then eat your breakfast before you make Hunk think he ruined it.” Shiro dropped the forced cheerfulness and looked at his plate in distaste. Keith smirked softly while he watched Shiro take one reluctant bite after another. He took another bite of his own breakfast and savored the flavor that, other than a slight bitterness, was quite good. Shiro ate it as if it were some “healthy” concoction of Coran’s making. But, at least he was eating it.

 

\--------

 

    Several hours later, Keith stood in front of Pidge’s door again. The tray was gone. The note now read “I hope you’re happy.” Actually, he was.

 

    With a grin, Keith tapped on the door. Several minutes later he knocked again, louder.  “Pidge?” More silence. With fresh determination, Keith ramped up the force and the knocking became pounding. 

 

    Friends. Keith had always found it hard to make and keep friends. Here, light years away from home and with only four other people from his entire planet, he had a sudden wealth of them that he'd never expected. He refused to lose this one without a fight. “Pidge! You promised! Just come eat lunch and I'll leave you alone for the rest of the afternoon.” He paused. The walls were just thin enough that sometimes you could hear things on the other side. Shiro’s nightmares could actually wake you up from a light doze. Pidge, on the other hand, was sneaky and quiet, there wasn't much chance of him hearing anything from her room.

 

    “Lance is planning on painting smiley faces all over your lion…” Still nothing. “Don’t you think you should go stop him? They're sure to be terrible. I won't stop him, in fact I may just go help!”

 

    He jumped back in startlement when something struck the door from the other side. “Keith, SHUT UP.” He let out his breath and steeled himself with fresh determination. Her muffled voice continued and he held off on his assault, “Firstly, if either of you even BREATHES on my lion I will kill you. Secondly, I am in the middle of parsing some comm data and I am BUSY. Thirdly, I ate the stupid tray of food so you can tell Hunk ‘thank you’ for the cookies and I promise if you leave me alone for the next few hours I WILL join you for dinner.”

    “Nope. I’m not leaving and if you want me to, you can open this door and tell me that to my face!” He didn’t know why but he had to see her and verify with his own eyes that she was alive and ok. 

 

    Mysterious bangs, clatters and the sound of metal objects scraping across the floor came from the other side of the door and Keith eyed it apprehensively.

 

    Just as he was starting to worry for her safety, the noises stopped. After a long and uncomfortable moment of silence, Keith raised his arm to pound on the door again.

The door disappeared under his hand as it slid open. In its place was a small, fiery bundle of temper; a firecracker with a lit fuse and he was the obvious target of the impending explosion.

 

    “What is wrong with you?” She shrieked. His eyes widened and he brought his arms up in a defensive position as he took a step backwards.

 

    Pidge stalked forwards into the hallway, leaving the darkness of her room. “I told you to leave me alone. I am researching critical information and you keep pestering me over stupid things. I have water! I have enough emergency rations under my bed to last a month! I do not NEED to socialize, I do not have TIME to socialize, and if you think you need me to hold your hand or let you coddle me in order to feel better about some crazy idea of misplaced guilt, then think again and get it through your thick skull this time!”

 

    “My thick skull?” Keith was truly fed up with her self-centered attitude. “I'm not the one who's locked herself away from all the people who care about her and is refusing to talk about anything that’s bothering her!”

 

    “The only thing bothering me right now is you.” The ice in her words as she crossed her arms over her chest shot straight through him.

 

    “What the hell, Pidge? Why are you so angry with me? All I'm trying to do is make sure you're eating and taking care of yourself. I’m just watching out for you. We've always done that for each other.”

 

    “Oh yes, and such a good job you’ve done of that. Three days in a healing pod, or was the count longer? No one will give me a straight answer so you'll forgive my skepticism about the level of your concern.” She glared at him for one moment longer than was comfortable. “Now, leave me alone.” She spun on her heels to stalk back into the dim solitude of her room.

 

    Keith jumped forward and grabbed her wrist.“Hold on a minute.” He managed to keep ahold of her as she tried and failed to execute three different methods of breaking his grip. Before she could launch into another tirade, he leaned close and spoke as coolly and calmly as he could manage with his own emotions in a maelstrom, “We had a deal this morning, remember?”  Pidge actually paused in a moment of confusion as the question took her aback. “I promised to leave you alone and let you sleep. In return you promised to eat the food on the tray AND join us for lunch. It is lunchtime.”

 

    Pidge sucked her breath in through her teeth and when she released it with only a hiss and not a tirade, Keith continued, “Now, I am willing to allow a concession this once. I will go now, and leave you alone to do your work. However… in return, you will join us for dinner. I want you to set an alarm. I want you to stop, take a shower, get cleaned up and come to the dining room without anyone pounding on your door to drag you out.” He let go and she gave him an unreadable stare as she rubbed her wrist. “There is no negotiating or deal this time, Pidge. I will see you at dinner.”

 

    “And what if I decide I’d rather eat in my room?”

 

    “Then there will be consequences and they won’t involve smiley faces on your lion.”

 

    Without looking back, Keith proceeded down the hallway and Pidge watched him until he turned the corner.  _ I can’t believe he actually threatened me. _

 

\-----

 

    Dinner was exactly the unmitigated disaster Pidge had feared it would be. They watched her. Their eyes always on her. Why were they watching so closely?

 

    Pidge sat with her eyes down and her hands in her lap. Quiet, tightly wound inside, it was worse than the only time she had been forced to be a flower girl at her cousin’s wedding. Everyone had been paying attention to her then, too. They had expected things of her and she hadn’t any idea what they had wanted or how to go about delivering it. This felt a lot like that as well, except this time she thought she knew what they wanted.  _ They want me to be just like them. They want me to smile and nod and pretend… _  Pretend what?

 

    She was hyper-aware of Allura and Coran. That made her aware of the food. Did they put stuff in the food?  _ Maybe that’s how they brainwashed them all.  _ Keith was watching her like a hawk. She smiled at him, took a small spoonful and put it in her mouth and chewed.  When he looked away, she wiped her mouth with her napkin and surreptitiously spit the goo into it.  _ Suspicious bastard. _

 

    At one point with everyone’s attention diverted, she managed to spoon half her bowlful into the dish next to hers which was Lance’s. Keith seemed to relax as the amount of food in her bowl decreased.  _ Pathetically easy to deceive them. They must be brainwashed. No one could be that naturally stupid.  _

 

    She was almost lulled into the easy camaraderie that flowed around the table as the meal progressed but she resisted. Still, it would be something she would miss.  _ It’s a lie and a trap. _

She wanted this, but with her own family. She wanted to get them home and safe and everything to go back to the way it had been before that stupid mission that ripped her world apart. Tears welled up from the deep pain in her chest and she choked them back before they spilled out. Hunk asked her a question. She answered with something snarky and borderline inappropriate. The mood of the table relaxed another notch and she had no idea what any of the conversation was about, it was all automatic responses. Her attention was back in her room and the message waiting there for her to read.  _ Soon... _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah! I was impatient and decided to toss this out to you all a day early.  
> Things are heating up a bit. Really, I don't think all this stress is good for her.  
> I loved writing this argument. Keith is just as savage as our little Gremlin.


	6. Listen to Me Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When lions speak, paladins should listen.
> 
> This chapter, the castle really does go apples and bananas. Keith thinks he knows who's behind it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** things get a bit brutal in this chapter. If you have any triggers you are concerned about, please leave me a message here, or on my tumblr @littlepennycandy.tumblr.com. I will answer as quickly as I can. this chapter includes burning, scalding and crushing injuries

    Keith was angry. This was not a new thing. He was often angry. This time, he was angry because no one was listening to him. Which, unfortunately, was also not a new thing in his life.

 

    Something was going on with Pidge, he was sure of it. No one else seemed to think it was serious. They assured him that with time, she’d get over it. They scoffed, and accused him of conspiracy theories, dismissing his concerns as nothing. But, the way she was acting wasn’t normal. Pidge could be rude, obsessive and occasionally exasperating but she’d never been… mean. There was something wrong in her brain and if he was right, they were all in deep trouble. 

 

    The castle shuddered and heaved its way through another wormhole jump and Keith braced himself against the bulkhead. 

 

    The voltron crew were on the run. A galra fleet has been on their trail for well over a week.  Relentlessly. Allura would jump them through a wormhole and within hours the fleet would be jumping in behind them. The Princess was starting to show the strain. Keith wondered how much longer she could hold out before they'd have to fight, and then they'd all die because they still couldn't form Voltron. 

 

    Keith was still trying to connect with Pidge. Whenever he pounded on her door, she told him to go away and claimed she was tracking comm data or parsing logs or some such nonsense. Currently she claimed to be trying to figure out how the fleet was finding them, or she said she was sleeping. Keith smelled something... and it wasn't Hunk's socks.

    Nothing ever took this long for Pidge to figure out and the only time she ever slept was passed out over her keyboard.

 

    He stalked her. It wasn’t polite but she had been acting strangely since their last mission and he was never able to shake the feeling she wasn’t right. So Keith continued to pound on her door and yell at her until she answered him. He spent hours pleading with her to open it, until his throat was hoarse. He had left trays of Hunk’s cooking outside her door. Untouched trays that he would retrieve the next day. He had even cajoled Allura into coming down to open Pidge’s door. Sadly, even that had failed. The little computer wizard had found a way to block Allura’s override. 

 

    In a desperate ploy, Keith had dragged Shiro down to try talking to her. That had been an unmitigated disaster. Shiro looked as dragged out as Allura, quite frankly. Keith was worried about him as well. The haunted look in his eyes was at an intensity the younger man hadn’t seen since Shiro had ejected Sendak into space. But Shiro and Pidge had a special bond, if anyone could get her to open the door, it would be him.

 

    Hours later, they both conceded. Pidge had refused to speak with Shiro through the door or even acknowledge his presence, although she had cursed Keith out quite luridly.  There was no way anyone could tell him that was normal.  

 

    The castle lurched and settled into normal space. Keith huffed in relief.  

 

    That was when the red lion's decided to sink her claws into his mind.

“Ugh. stop it. There are easier ways to get my attention.”

 

    She chuffed in the back of his head and prodded him again.

“What?”  he snapped back at her.

 

    He felt her concern bleeding into their connection. She shoved an image full of the color green at him. 

“What the heck does that mean?”

 

    A jab of frustration was his answer. Apparently his lion thought her paladin was being thick.

Keith took a deep breath and let his awareness settle. The message was a bit clearer, it was the green paladin.

“Yeah, I know. There’s something off. My gut is screaming at me that there’s something wrong but I don’t know what. Do you?”  That was a long shot. The Lions knew many things, they were ancient, sentient creatures after all. Getting a clear and relevant answer that was comprehensible to smaller human minds was a lot more difficult.

 

    Keith took a deep breath, relaxed his body and mind, and opened himself to his partner. He invited her in, allowed her quintessence to flow through him as it did in battle. He felt the familiar charge of energy and passion fill him and he rode it as it surged through him. In battle he would use that energy and focus it. Today he held himself in check, let it flow around him and simply waited.

 

    Images, feelings, impressions… some of them belonging to the red lion, and some belonging to one of the others, flooded his mind.

 

Quintessence twisted and tainted.

    A bond fraying, fear. 

The smell of circuits burning, destruction.

         Logic loop loop loop...error. Indecision. A lack of direction.

Connection to be severed. Sorrow and loss.

 

    Keith’s eyes popped open. “Whoa.” The flavor of crisp technology still lingered in the back of his throat, mingling with the sensation of being able to breathe flames if he chose to do so. The feeling of flames was something that often lingered after a chat with his lion. The sparking of electricity was something new. “Was that from...the green lion?”

 

    Affirmation.

“So there really is something wrong, isn’t there?”

 

    Affirmation.

“Something bad is going to happen.”

 

    Strong Affirmation.

“And there’s nothing we can do.”

 

    Denial. With teeth.

“Oh, so you think there IS something we can do?”

 

    Uncertainty. Determination.

“Your confidence in me is inspiring, I’m sure.”

 

    The feeling of a large cat licking his face from the inside of his head was something Keith would probably never figure out, and never get used to, either.

 

    Suddenly feeling all of the exhaustion he had been holding at bay, Keith decided that an early bed time would be appropriate, even though the castle was only beginning to cycle into its night-mode. He could mull over the information his lion had given him and perhaps he could come up with a plan in the morning.

 

\-----

  
  


    Lance’s screams woke him from dreams of glowing, violet eyes in an impassive face. Groggy, Keith fell from his bed and staggered into the hallway, ramming his shoulder into the doorway of his room on the way out. He lurched down the hall to Lance’s quarters which, thank goodness, were to the left and just the next door down. It was locked, and Lance’s cries of pain and panic were still echoing off the walls. Keith pounded the emergency override button. When it failed to respond and open, he added his own shouts to Lance’s voice as he pounded on the communication panel. 

 

    “Allura! Override on the door to Lance’s quarters. NOW! Emergency! Allura, Coran, acknowledge!” Keith pounded on the lock panel with the hand holding his bayard. He didn’t even remember grabbing it on his way out the door.

 

    “Keith! It won’t open, it’s jammed and it won’t accept my override code. The blue lion is roaring, what is going on down there?”

 

    “Lance is in trouble. I have to get in there.” _ I have to get in there now, before we have a huge, mechanical lion trying to claw its way through the castle to get to her pilot. _ Keith summoned the blade on his bayard and jammed it between the wall and the door, using it to pry it open. He grunted,“Wake the others up. Send help down here, right now!” Forcing the door open, Keith shoved his way into the room.

 

    Weakening cries were coming from the bathroom. The air in Lance’s quarters was hot and full of steam, and the gaggingly strong odor of cooked meat. Keith’s stomach lurched as he headed for the bathroom.

 

\-----

 

    Keith swallowed convulsively as he looked through the frosted glass of the healing pod at Lance’s face. He refused to throw up. Again.

 

    Shiro, face pale and haunted, stood beside him with a hand on his shoulder, fingers digging in painfully. Keith didn’t mind. It was a distraction he needed from the sight that was etched in his brain.

 

    Lance had been scalded. Almost boiled alive by his own shower. Hunk and Coran were back in his quarters now, ripping it apart to figure out what had happened. Allura was in the hangar, soothing the blue lion.

 

    Shiro spoke softly, “You saved him, Keith.” Keith shook his head in the negative and resisted fiddling with the bandage that covered his own hand where the boiling water had splashed him as he had stuck his hand under the shower to turn the system off. Keith had been forced to pull his scalded hand back. He had been unable to stop the burning water. Shiro, with his metal arm, was the one who had leaned over Lance’s body to turn the system off. Keith’s only contribution had been breaking open the various locked doors. First, the door to Lance’s quarters, then the locked door to the bathroom, and finally, the door to the shower stall. How the hell did you lock a shower stall? The glass had been the standard Altean unbreakable stuff, too. Keith never thought his bayard would be used as a crowbar this many times in one night. He had done very little but help Shiro carry what was left of the blue paladin to the healing chamber. He was burned all over. Hopefully the scarring wouldn’t be too bad.

 

    “I didn’t. I was pretty ineffective once I got the door open. And more to the point, I shouldn’t have needed to.” His voice was harsh with emotions he didn’t want to express. “Where’s Pidge? She would normally be here. It’s not like her to ignore an injured teammate. Even Allura left her post to come down here.” 

 

    “Leave her alone, Keith. She’s having a rough time.” Shiro sounded as tired as he looked.

 

    “Yeah, well we’re all having a rough time now. What happened to supporting each other?”

 

    Shiro let out a sigh that was almost a sob.

 

    Keith softened, “You look like hell. When was the last time you slept?” Keith could see the dark circles under his eyes were deeper than usual.

 

    “I, I don’t remember.” Shiro scrubbed his fingers through his hair.

 

    “Go back to bed.” Keith shoved the older man away, barely moving him. “You can’t take care of anyone if you don’t take care of yourself.”

 

    “No. I want to stay here a while.”

 

    “Then I’ll stay too.”

 

\-----

 

    Hours later, Hunk joined them. He was a mess, and visibly upset. He held a twisted piece of piping in his hand. It was the one Shiro had deformed when he had turned the water off.

“Bad news, guys. There was absolutely nothing physically wrong with Lance’s shower.” 

 

    “Coran and I went over it several times. There was no reason for the water to be that hot or for it not to turn off. It’s almost like that thing when the Galra crystal poisoned the ship’s systems. In fact, we suspected it might have been lingering energy in the system but that didn’t make any sense. But we checked anyway. Nope. Maybe the castle is haunted.” Hunk turned the bent chunk of metal over in his hands. “Anyway, I’m gonna go down to the storeroom and find a replacement pipe so Lance can have his shower back when he gets out of the pod.”

\-----

 

    Keith was harassing Shiro into eating a bowl of green goo, one spoonful at a time, when the yellow lion shook the castle with her roar. Food forgotten, they stared at each other for one long moment. “What the hell..” Keith’s voice tapered off, but Shiro croaked out, “Hunk.”

 

    “He was looking for a new pipe. Those are in storeroom three, I think. The big one.”

 

    “The one with the moving racks?”

 

    Keith swallowed and just nodded. “Let’s go.”

 

\-----

 

    Another healing pod. Another friend behind frosted glass.

 

    “Fractured ribs and contusions, Broken tibia and a cracked fibula.” How in the world did that happen?” Keith swallowed hard before answering Coran.

 

    “He went down to the large storeroom to find a pipe to fix Lance’s shower. They’re in the large storeroom with the moving racks.” He paused and swallowed again before continuing. That food goo was not happy in his stomach. “It seems the computer system closed the racks while Hunk was still between them.”  Hunk had still been conscious when he and Shiro had found him. Poor guy had been out of his head with pain and wheezing with every breath; but still babbling at them to not worry, he was going to be fine. 

 

    In fact, Hunk would have been dead if he hadn’t dropped the pipes when the rack started closing. They had wedged themselves in the track system and prevented the heavy shelves from closing all the way. Once again, Keith wondered where Pidge was.

 

    Pidge watched all, the glow from her monitor casting purple shadows on the wall.

 

    “Coran, something is going on with the castle.” Keith’s voice was low and urgent. 

 

    “Well, it appears that may be the case, but there’s no sign of Galra crystal energy and the affected systems are hardly life-threatening…” Keith raised an eyebrow and leveled a hard stare at the royal advisor. “Very well. Point taken. I should say, rather, critical systems are not affected.” Coran shrugged. “I simply do not understand it. Perhaps Pidge would be the one to ask in this case.”

 

“Perhaps she would.” Keith’s voice was grim. “I’ll go talk to her.” It was time to corner Pidge for some hard questioning.  

 

    “No.” Shiro spoke up. He knew Keith’s current obsession with Pidge and this once, wanted to avoid another confrontation between the two of them. “I’ll go talk with her. You check on Allura in the control room. Coran will stay here with Lance and Hunk. Hopefully they’ll both be out of the pods soon.”

 

    Coran nodded cheerfully. “Oh certainly. If all goes well, Lance should be out in a few days and Hunk, perhaps the day after that. They should both heal up fine.”

 

    Keith huffed.  “Fine. I’ll check on the princess.” He spun on his heels and stalked out of the room. 

 

    Coran placed a hand on Shiro’s shoulder. The black paladin looked up at him inquiringly. “You know, young paladin… and yes, you’re still young to me… this castle used to be filled with people and back when the war broke out there were many that saw the harsh face of war and found that it was too much for them. We had healers whose duty was to heal the mind and soul.” He sighed. “Alas, they are all gone and I am not trained in that ancient art. However, I have also seen many things and I have ears to listen and shoulders wide enough to cry on. They are at your disposal when you need them.” He gave Shiro a smile and a squeeze on the shoulder, then turned back to the pods and pretended not to notice the tears building up in the paladin’s eyes.

 

    “Thank you.” Shiro walked out of the room with a lighter heart than he’d felt in many days.

 

\-----

 

    Keith found Allura in the main control room, as expected, standing tall at the control pedestals and carefully watching the sensor panel. She looked a little… frazzled. 

 

    “I do not understand it. How do they keep finding us?” He heard her mutter under her breath.

 

    “Princess?” Keith approached slowly, doing his best not to startle her. After all, he didn’t want to get hurled into a wall. They had enough injuries today. 

 

    “Oh! Keith. Good day. I take it Coran has things well in hand down in the medical bay?”

 

    “Yes, Hunk is in one of the healing pods and Lance is looking better. They are both lucky to be alive.” Keith’s heart was rabbiting in his chest at the mere thought of how close of a call it had been. Not attacked in a war zone, facing the enemy and protecting innocents, but taken out by accidents in a place they thought was safe, where they could let their guard down and relax.

 

    Keith studied the Altean princess for a moment, she had circles under her eyes and her hair, normally smooth and shiny, surrounding her like a cloud, looked frizzled and unkempt. Obviously, she was running low on reserves, both energy and sleep. When was the last time she left the control room? Keith turned his attention to the screens she was viewing. He cursed under his breath. “Are those Galra ships on the scanner?”

 

    Her voice was tired and hollow. “Yes. They just appeared on the long range. Again. We have about four hours before they get here.” She sighed. “I just don’t know how they keep finding us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, our heroes are in trouble now!  
> Poor Lance and Hunk. 
> 
> And Allura... that girl needs some sleep.  
> How DO those Galra keep finding them anyhow?


	7. Whispers Within

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The infamous "soldering iron" chapter.
> 
> Shiro faces his demons,  
> Keith faces... Pidge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: PTSD and voices, violence blood and burning

     Shiro turned right at the doorway and headed towards the dormitories. Immediately, the whispers began again.

  


**_Your fault_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_should have been you_ ** **** **** **_…_ ** **** **_you’re the one that killed him_ ** **** **** **_…_ ** **** **_Killed him_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_kill_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_you should have died_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_you_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_die_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_kill_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_your fault_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_monster_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_die, monster_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_he was innocent_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_Champion of what?_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_monsters_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_killer of innocents_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_why didn’t you die?_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_killer_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_you_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_blood, on your hands_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_Monster_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_blood on your face_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_their blood_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_her  blood_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_his blood_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_where is your blood?_ ** **** **** **_…_ ** **** **_monster_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_Champion_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_killer_ ** **** **_…_ ** ****

  


    The lights flickered.  Or did they? Keith would have mentioned if the lights were flickering. Was that in his head? Like the Galra soldier around the corner? Like the sound of footsteps? Like the Voices?

  


**_Killer_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_monster_ ** **** **_…_ ** ****

  


    Shiro grasped his head in both hands. They were loud and insistent. Why didn’t anyone else hear them? Or did they hear them and just agree? He could smell the blood. Was it real? If he could smell it, it must be real, right? He could feel the weapon in his hand, dripping blood. The feel of the grip, the weight of the blade…

  


**_You killed him_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_your_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_fault_ ** **** **_…_ **

  


    No, his hand was the blade. There was no weapon but him. He blinked, trying to see past the images of blood, trying to clear the accusing eyes. 

  


**_Silly Champion_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_cannot save them_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_die, all die_ ** **** **_..._ ** **** **_because of you_ ** **** **_..._ ** **** **_killer_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_you killed them_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_they die_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_monster_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_who would you save?_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_save yourself_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_let them die_ ** **** **** **_…_ ** **** **_all die_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_blood on your hands_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_Champion is the strongest_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_weak die_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_you cannot save them…_ ** ****

  


    “No.” He pleaded with the voices. The ones in his head. Were they in his head? They were so loud…

  


**_Our champion_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_you lost_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_you cannot save_ ** **** **_…_ ** **** **_the ones you love._ **

  


    There was a door in front of him. His goal. He had reached his goal. Pidge. Yes. He had to make sure she was all right. Make sure she was safe. If she was safe, the voices were lying. If she was safe, that was real. Hand shaking, he knocked on the door. “Pidge, are you alright? Please, open the door.” 

  


    Did she hear him? The voices were so loud, maybe she couldn’t hear him over the voices.  Could she hear the voices? The confusion of the situation was spinning him out of control. He needed someone to ground him, so he could tell what was real and what was not. He slid down against the door until he was kneeling with his head against the doorframe.

  


**_The only real thing is the monster inside of you…_ ** **** **_you failed them all._ **

  


    The door slid open. Eagerly, Shiro looked up. Pidge would tell him the truth. In the dim light of the room, he saw her. “Pidge?” He croaked.

  


    “No, Champion. You have failed this one as well.” The purple glow in the dim room reflected in her eyes. Empty eyes. Accusing eyes. No… please… 

  


    The voices laughed, the world spun around, Shiro curled into a ball and stared into the darkness of real and not real, unable to find his way.

  


    Pidge stepped over the prone form of the black paladin and walked down the hall.

  


\-----

  


    Uneasy, Keith set his bayard down on the console and flipped through the security feeds. Was there an invader in the castle? As often as they’d been jumping in and out of wormholes there was a slight possibility that someone had managed to sneak in from the Galra fleet that was tailing them. And how exactly was that happening, anyhow? 

  


    Allura didn’t know. Coran didn’t have a clue. Hunk.. was out of commission. The only one left to ask was Pidge. Pidge… Keith’s blood heated. She was pushing him away, he was losing her and he had no idea why or what to do about it. He almost wanted to give up.  

  


    He glanced over at Allura whose focus was on the incoming Galra fleet. No, this was his family now and he wasn’t going to lose one of them without a fight. Not this way. Keith turned the monitor to the cameras just outside Pidge’s room. There were an alarming number of them that were non-functional. Not surprising. He figured she’d hacked into them and blocked them all for her privacy. There was one all the way down the hall and if he zoomed in all the way, he could just get a glimpse of her doorway in the corner. 

  


    Keith’s heart began thudding in his chest. Pidge was walking down the hallway towards the camera feed. She had left her room. Why? His breath caught in a hiss. Shiro had gone to talk to her, where was he?

  


    Allura gasped behind him and Keith felt the roar of the black lion reverberating through the deck plates. Shiro was in trouble. Keith looked at the monitor again, there was a dark form hunched over in her doorway. Shiro! What had happened? Why was she walking away so calmly? Why wasn’t she helping him? His blood chilled and a sudden burst of intuition brought many observations into a rapidly more disturbing probability.

  


    Keith cursed. “Allura, I think Pidge might be behind all this, somehow.”

    “What? How?” Allura was usually much faster on the uptake and Keith realized how much the week-long pursuit had taken out of her. She was running on fumes and barely able to pilot the castle, much less put two coherent thoughts together.  

  


    Keith grabbed her by the shoulders and spoke very carefully, “I am going down to the lion bays. I think that’s where Pidge is headed. I’m the only one left to stop her and figure out what she’s doing.” That was a horrifying thought, there was no backup for him. “Keep an eye on those ships, that’s your job. I’ll take care of this.”  Numbly, Allura nodded and he released her. With a small salute and a cocky smile he didn’t feel in the slightest, Keith took off at a run.

  
  


    Halfway down the hall, he realized he didn’t know Shiro’s condition. Skidding to a stop, he hit the comm panel. “Coran, what’s the status on Lance and Hunk?”

  


    “Well, Paladin, they should be healed up fully in about 3 or 4 days.”

  


    Keith fought down the burst of panic. That was too long. “Coran, we’ve got a situation and I really need them. What’s the minimum time before you can get them out of the pod safely?”

  


    “Oh! Er, well… I suppose if it were an emergency I could pull them out right now but if you want either of them to be mobile enough to assist you in any way it would be at least another varga or so. I might be able to get Lance out a bit sooner.”

  


    Keith did some mental math, converting the Altean time into it’s earth equivalent, and didn’t care for the numbers he was getting. Still, it was better than nothing. “Please do what you can, Coran. Shiro’s down and I’m on my own.”

  


    “Righty-O, number four. I’ll see what I can do.”

  


    Keith clicked off the comm and reached for the steadying presence of his lion. She thrummed in the back of his head. He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Ok. I can do this.” 

  


\-----

  


    Keith skidded into the green lion’s bay. “Pidge!” His heart was racing. Where was she?

He spotted movement on the far side, almost obscured by the green lion’s particle field. What was she doing? He strode across the hangar, heels echoing in the vast space.  Red rumbled in the back of his head. She seemed agitated. Distracted momentarily by his lion’s unease, he had lost sight of Pidge.  

  


    Something warned him to be cautious. He circled around the green lion, looking for her pilot.   Pidge’s sprawling workbenches popped up in the dim light and behind them, the bulk of the pod that Pidge had modified with a cloaking field like her lion’s. And there she was, doing what could only be a pre-flight check.

  


“Pidge?” He asked, hesitantly. There was something odd going on. Keith, who had always been good at reading body language, at least in combat situations, had internal alarms going off left and right. This was not just the unease of his lion. 

  


    Pidge raised her head and looked at him, face impassive. And then, his blood chilled as her lips lifted in a sneer. “Shouldn’t you be dying on the training deck, right now?.”

  


    “What?” he stuttered. 

  


    “You really should be on the training deck right now. I programmed it for you specially, today. I was hoping not to have to do this personally.” Her fingers brushed over the assortment of tools on the bench.

  


    Certainty coalesced into a hard lump that settled somewhere near his heart. This was not his teammate. “Pidge, what’s wrong with you?”

  


    “Well, we might as well get this over with.” She shoved her helmet to the side, pocketed a couple of tools and after one more long glance around the workstation, summoned her bayard and attacked him.

  


    Instinctively he called his own bayard. When nothing happened, the shocked realization that he had left it on the control panel by the monitor screens almost froze him. His lion screamed in the back of his mind and that shocked him enough that he was able to throw his body out of the path of her attack. Keith was able to block her next thrust with a piece of random scrap. He threw a second chunk and by what had to be sheer luck, because his throwing skills were definitely sub-par, he connected and sent her bayard skidding across the floor to rest near her lion’s energy barrier. One minute into the fight and he had already realized one very important fact. She was trying to kill him. 

  


    Pidge, already a ferocious and devious little fighter, was holding nothing back. Neither one of them were armed now, but she was using every dirty little trick he had ever taught her, as well as a few he knew she’d gotten from Shiro. And biting. What the Hell? Keith was offended. That’s worse than underhanded. Only Lance would have taught her to bite during hand to hand combat. 

  


    Forced into a protective defense, Keith was uncomfortably aware that he was handicapped by his desire not to hurt her. He would have to set that aside if he was to win. One of them was going to get hurt, if not killed. Keith shied away from that possibility but it kept coming back to him with every flurry of punches, every flip kick, and… 

  


    With the rolling stool she just kicked at him!  

  


    He was able to sidestep it, but that left him open for her to throw something else. Hunk’s favorite wrench flew through the air to connect with his shoulder. Angry now, he refused to wince at the pain and charged straight at her.

  


    A mistake, and he knew it a second before she used his own momentum against him to throw him into the workbench itself. 

  


    What. the. Hell? 

    Keith had always been the better fighter. Why was he losing focus so easily?

  


    She danced away from him, towards the green lion, face still cold and calculating. She was maneuvering to retrieve her bayard and finish him off. 

  


    Pidge was quick and he was an emotional wreck after all the accidents of the last few days. It was slowing him down. He circled back to keep her away from it and cursed the fact that he had left his own behind in the control room. Patience. Patience yields focus.

  


    Accidents… what if they hadn’t been accidents? The idea shot through his mind like an electric pulse. The image of Shiro crumpled up in front of her door confronted him. Focus shattered. He stumbled and missed his grab. She responded by attempting to break his fingers. A twist and pivot, he was able to get behind her. But only for a moment. She was dancing away again while he attempted to circle back into range. 

  


    This was not working. It was time to calm down and think of a plan. Patience. Focus… 

Unarmed combat wasn’t working. He’d left his bayard in the command room with Allura. That was stupid but nothing to be done about it now. He did have… his knife. He looked at Pidge with her cold stare and the waiting stance. The thought of slicing her with cold steel clenched his chest in a way he couldn’t describe.

  


    “Afraid, Keith? There’s no one left to help you.” Stalling for time was not his forte. Talking was what Lance was good at. Keith was too straightforward. Still, he supposed it was worth a try.

  


    “Pidge would never hurt me, so why would I be afraid of her?” He forced his voice to be soft and steady.

  


    A feral grin was his only answer. Ok, he hated that grin. He really did. She was always up to something nasty when she brought it out. Keith braced himself internally as she reached into one of her cargo pockets. What he forgot to do was watch his footing.  

  


    Hunk’s wrench skidded out from under his feet and for one moment of dismay, Keith flailed, trying to regain balance before he crashed into the green lion’s particle barrier. Pidge pressed the attack and he was horrified to see what she had in her hand. 

  


    He writhed aside but it was too late. The burning, white-hot length of a pencil-fine soldering iron penetrated his side. He smelled the burning of cloth and flesh before the pain registered on his nerves. The scream tore out of his throat as his fingers clutched weakly at the cordless handle of the hot, iron tool, scrabbling against her delicate fingers. With a final, wicked twist, she yanked it from his side and stared callously as he slumped to his knees.

  


    “Pidge…” he begged her with every fiber of his being. Tears blurred his vision. From pain? Or sheer helpless rage? Did it matter in the end? 

  


She smiled sweetly as she leaned over and lined up the white-hot tip with his left eye. “Now, hold still and we’ll get this over with.” Teasing, she held it there for several very long heartbeats.

  


“Just do it.” he spat, the pain of her betrayal superseding the agony in his side as he glared defiantly, right back at her. Red Lion roared in his mind.

  


Keith felt a rumble in the floor beneath his knees that rattled the tools on the workbench several meters away. The powerful growl of a large mechanical cat rolled through his ears a moment later. The green lion. He had forgotten she was behind him. How could he have forgotten? Her green energy had been humming at his back all this time. The barrier that was swiftly moving forwards.

  


The absolute shock that he saw in Pidge’s eyes must have matched the astonishment in his own as the powerful green field surged forward and engulfed him. A blink of his eyes and that glowing wall was now in front of him. Preventing her from striking, preventing her from reacquiring the bayard that now lay inside the particle barrier with him. The lion was protecting Keith from her own paladin.

  


Pidge pressed her gauntleted hand against the barrier. “Traitor,” she snarled. “It doesn’t matter.  I knew you didn’t want me around anyways.” Her attention shifted back to him. “Goodbye, Keith.” He couldn’t reply. He was too busy trying not to pass out on his wobbly knees.

She turned her back and scooped up Hunk’s wrench, depositing it on the workbench as she retrieved her helmet. One more cold look was all he received as she continued on her way to the pod. 

  


Keith whispered as the darkness swept in and took all conscious thought, “Don’t go…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well well well... the halfway point. This one was one of those magical chapters that just flowed out onto the page. I hope you enjoyed it. We finally see how far Pidge is willing to go.
> 
> Scary, isn't she?  
> Poor Keith.
> 
> Have a nice weekend!
> 
> (Author grabs her pen and runs!)


	8. Finding What Matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You want me to hack into Pidge’s laptop… you’re insane.”
> 
> Hazard pay takes on a whole new level of meaning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grab some more tissues. Here we go again!
> 
> Warning: Panic attack for Shiro.
> 
> But Lance gets a moment to shine.

 

   “Keith. Hey, Keith! Wake up, Mullethead!” Only Lance could be that annoying this early in the morning. Keith groaned and rolled over. Or he would have, except the groan turned into a whine when jagged bolts of pain through his side reminded him that he wasn’t in bed and it hadn’t been a dream. He was lying on the floor next to the green lion.

 

    “Green, can you let your barrier down so I can help him?” That’s right, Keith mused, she had protected him. “Seriously, I’m not gonna hurt him. I want to help. Why are you being so protective?” Green’s growl rolled through his head in an odd way. Oh, that’s because his head was against the metal floor. How strange. 

 

    “Blue,” Lance’s tone was leaning towards exasperation, “can you talk to her? Or have Red talk to her, or something? I want to see if he’s bleeding.” Bleeding? No. It had been pretty well cauterized. But it hurt. Oh god, it hurt. Keith felt the hum of energy dissipate and the green glow behind his eyes disappeared. Moments later, Lance was lifting him up and checking him for damage.

 

    “Keith, can you hear me? What happened? And why the heck is the green lion treating you like her most precious cub. You two-timing your own lion, man? That’s ballsy of you.” Keith snorted and then wheezed in pain.

 

    “Lance, shut up.” Keith cracked one eye open and managed a crooked grin. “Are we having a bonding moment here?” He clenched his teeth and tried sitting up.

 

    “Heh, you’ll live. But what the crow, man? You’ve got a hole in your side. Anything else?” Keith grunted as Lance manhandled him, trying to find other injuries.

 

    “No. That’s pretty much it, other than some bruises.” Keith focused on Lance’s face, the burns were barely healed over and his face and arms looked like a patchwork of red and pale pink against his bronze skin tone. “You look like hell. Shouldn’t you still be in a healing pod?”  Keith actually was worried. Lance needed more time in the pod, but he was sure glad Coran had been able to pull him out early.

 

    Lance huffed. “Yeah, I’ll live, but it hurts like hell. Think you can stand?” Keith nodded briefly and Lance helped him to his feet. Keith almost blacked out from the pain. He gritted his teeth and  held on until the spots faded from his vision and he could breathe again. 

 

    Slowly, one step at a time, Lance helped him walk down the hall. “So, what happened?”

 

    The story was sour like bile. “Pidge sabotaged us. Took the stealth pod and left. After she stabbed me.”

 

    “What? Dude! She stabbed you? Did you make fun of her height? Because that’s what happened…”

 

    “Shut up, Lance, not funny.” Keith tried to take a deep breath, and after reconsideration, settled for a couple smaller ones. “Besides, I don’t think it was her. At least not entirely.”

 

    “That makes no sense, dude. You sure you aren’t suffering from blood loss?”

 

    “Remember that last mission? She got shot by that lightning. Maybe it wasn’t electricity.” Three more steps down the hall. “She hasn’t been the same since she got back. Maybe it’s mind control. We gotta get her back.” Grasping at straws, but Keith couldn’t let go.

 

    “Dude, she stabbed you.”

 

    “I know. Shut up.”

 

    “Keith…”

 

    “Shut. Up. We won’t leave her behind, we won’t abandon her, and it doesn’t matter what the problem is because she’s part of our team.” Keith growled it through his teeth.

 

    “Yeah, dummy. I know.” Keith looked up and blinked at Lance who was staring straight ahead. “Don’t worry. We’ll get everyone patched up and then we’ll go get her.”

 

    “Lance, I think she sabotaged the ship.” Keith’s voice was thick with pain. “You’ve gotta find out how. Try her laptop. I don’t think she had it with her.”

 

    “You want me to hack into Pidge’s laptop… you’re insane.” Lance scoffed. 

 

    “Lance…”

 

    “Fine. Ok! But let’s get you into a healing pod first.”

 

    Keith sagged against him. “Thanks.” he whispered.

 

\-----

 

    Lance took a deep, steadying breath as he stood in front of Pidge’s room. Then he took another. “I would totally demand hazard pay for this, if we actually got paid. Keith owes me, big time.”  Lance steadied himself almost automatically as the castle lurched dramatically to the left before shuddering back into normal space. Allura’s wormhole jumps were getting rougher. Hopefully the castle could handle the strain.

 

    Lance’s eyes traveled back to the ominous doorway. As he and Coran were loading the red paladin into the healing pod, Keith had suddenly remembered that Shiro had gone to look for Pidge. Only Lance’s assurances of an immediate search-and-rescue had kept Keith from climbing right back out of that pod and falling on his face.

 

    So, since Pidge’s laptop was in her room, and Shiro’s last known location was in front of her room, here Lance stood, in front of her room. He took another deep breath.

“You are stalling, McClain.” he muttered to himself. “Just open the stupid door… and hope nothing explodes.”

 

    Lance was sweating bullets when the door opened for him, revealing the dark cave of Pidge’s quarters. A bright rectangle of light extended inwards from the hallway, making the darkness deeper and more intimidating. Lance crept in, ready for anything that might jump out at him, fall on him, or trip him.  

 

    The dark room seemed to be pleasantly trap-free. The unpleasant part was the lights failing to come on. With only the light from the hallway, Lance paused to let his vision adjust to the dimness. Circuit boards and wires littered the floor with other things less identifiable. A glow from the desk was easily identifiable as Pidge’s laptop, but the purple scrawl of symbols crawling across the screen transformed the relief of identification to shivering dread and his stomach dropped to find a new home in his shoes.

 

    Lance tore his gaze from that disturbing sight to scan the rest of the room. Piles of discarded scrap tech intermixed with the occasional empty juice packet or discarded bowl meant he would need to watch his step. There was a pile of dirty laundry at the foot of Pidge’s bed. Ironically, her bed was neatly made. Then again, she rarely used it, falling asleep wherever she happened to be when she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Lance took a step towards the desk but jerked around and summoned his bayard when the laundry pile whimpered.

  
  


    A fluff of white hair. “Shiro?”

Lance looked closer. One step and then another. He stopped immediately when Shiro scooted further into the corner. The bayard, it must be too much like a Galra blaster. Lance dismissed it and started looking for a way to get some lights on. The purple glow in the dark room couldn’t be good for their black paladin’s state of mind. 

 

    He found the intercom before he found a light panel. “Princess, Coran, I'm in Pidge’s quarters and I've found Shiro. I need to get some lights on in here but they're not working. Anything you can do from there? If you can, bring them up nice and slow, please.”

 

    “Also, can you see if Hunk’s available? If you could pour him out of that pod, I could sure use his help.” While he was waiting for lights to come on, Lance took a closer look at the laptop.

 

    He started talking to Shiro, saying anything that came in his head. “So what did you think of that last cooking thing of Hunk’s?  I know it was meat, but didn’t it taste a little like licorice to you?”

 

    There was one little thing about the laptop that was really, really bugging him and he wasn't about to touch it before he figured out what it was. “So, Green Lion was protecting Keith. Nutty, right? I've never seen one of them do that.”

 

    It wasn’t the program on the screen, although that was bugging him too. Purple script, purple lightning, purple worms, “Remember those worms on that planet? Which one was that? Sithan? Anyway, they were creepy. Hunk about had a fit when one crawled up his leg. Thought he would blast his own foot off.”

 

    Why would she leave a program just running?  “Maybe we should do some more running in our training. I think Pidge got kinda outta breath last time we were on a planet. Ummm, was that Prionix? I don't remember.” 

 

    The laptop...he never got this close to Pidge’s unguarded laptop. Unguarded. She never left it unlocked! Not since the time in the garrison he'd managed to Hasselhoff her desktop. That had been fun but she always kept it lock-screened and password protected now. “Remember those really paranoid aliens on that one planet that wanted you to take your arm off for security reasons and Allura about pitched a very polite and proper fit about us saving them so they'd have to get over it?”

 

    Always locked… so why was it open? “What was the name of that place? It's on the tip of my tongue.”

 

    “Rinva.” the whispers came out of the corner.

 

    “Rinva? Yeah that was it. I know Pidge would love to go back there just so she could do something devious and nasty to make them regret treating you that way.”

 

    Could she have left it open on purpose? “Hey, Shiro, Allura is working on getting the lights back up in here so don't freak out if they flicker a bit. It'll be lighter in here soon.” Lance could hear the still form in the corner shifting around. Good. He was starting to come back from the panic. 

 

    Hunk in a panic attack wanted to be held. Shiro couldn’t see/hear/think in his dark place. Sometimes a voice could give him an anchor to lead him back but no one could touch him until he was responsive again. Not even Keith.“Are you cold, Shiro? Would you like a blanket?”

 

   A tiny stilted noise was all the permission Lance needed and he shook a blanket out and carefully brought it over to the trembling man. He draped it around Shiro and tucked it in and then sat down just within touching distance, still trying to puzzle out the screen. “Hey, Shiro. Why would Pidge leave her laptop open like that? That’s not like her. Did she do it on purpose, do you think? “Lance watched the program scrolling across the screen, waiting. Waiting for the lights, waiting for Hunk, waiting for Shiro. Waiting for the world to make sense again.

 

    Once the lights came back on and Hunk had limped in and coaxed Shiro to sit next to him on Pidge’s bed, Lance was free to turn his full attention to the laptop. His brow creased, he contemplated the running program which appeared to be an open comm line. On a Galra frequency. An active Galra frequency. Lance tapped a few keys. He wasn’t bad at communications, it just never really interested him. And, since Pidge was so much better at it (and wouldn’t let him anywhere near any of the Altean stuff) it just took him longer to mull his way through it. Lance muttered softly to himself, “Looks like a signal trace. But it’s not. The signal is outgoing, not incoming. Is this how they’re finding us? Holy Crow. 

 

    Hunk, on the other hand, was busy nosing around in the cavities and cupboards in the headboard of Pidge’s bed. “Oooh, I found Pidge’s journal!”

 

    “Hunk, she’ll kill you for reading that.”

 

    “I just want a little peek, she’ll never know if you don’t tell her. Oops…” While Hunk had been flipping through the pages, an envelope had fallen out of the journal and landed on the bed next to him. “Hey, this is addressed to me!”

 

    Lance looked up from the computer screen, “What? Why would she put something like that in there?”

 

    Hunk had already opened it and was reading it. His face grew more solemn. Finally he simply handed the first of several folded sheets of paper to Lance.

 

**_Dear Hunk,_ **

**_I know you’ll find this because you’re such a big snoop and you’re sure to find my journal if something happens to me. So, since you’re reading this, I assume that I am gone._ **

 

Lance swallowed and after a deep breath, kept reading.

 

**_I’m not gonna put any mushy stuff in here. I hope you already know how much I care about you all. No, this is my insurance policy. It’s my final gift to you._ **

**_I am going to work on the assumption that I’ve been captured by the Galra. If not, that’s ok, you should go ahead and do this stuff anyhow. It won’t hurt to be safe._ **

**_Enclosed you’ll find a complete list of instructions on how to reset every single computer password and lock in the castle systems. Coran helped me put this together. It’s really important that you do this. It’ll help keep the Galra from hacking into the systems and taking down the particle barrier. I know if I’m tortured for information I’ll likely give in, so I hope you find this quickly and act on it in order to protect Voltron. Please take care of everyone for me._ **

**_And if you ever find my family, tell them I loved them._ **

 

**_Katie (aka Pidge)_ **

 

    Lance swallowed again, sniffled, and carefully folded the page back into its original folds. “We’re gonna get her back. Keith said so. But, in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to do as she says.”  He handed the page back to Hunk and asked, “Before you get started on that, would you look at this? I think this is how they’ve been tracking us and I want to know if it’s safe to turn it off.”

    Hunk shifted his bulk off the bed and came over to the laptop. After a few keystrokes and muttered technical jargon, he confirmed Lance’s guess. “Yup. This is what they’ve been tracking us with. And not only can we shut it off, but I can save the frequency they’ve been using and the I.D. of the ship she’s been talking to.” Hunk grinned at Lance, “we can use that to track them back, and if we’re lucky they’ll know where Pidge took that shuttle and we can let Keith beat that information out of their commander.”

 

    Lance’s eyes narrowed, “Only if he gets to them first.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that Shiro's panic attack in these chapters is probably not canon. It's actually loosely based off an attack one of my friends has. And, my way of helping her through it is not the same as her Mom's or her other friends. Each person's needs and ways of helping may be entirely different. Always ask before assuming because you may do more harm than good without guidance.
> 
> On a more cheerful note!...
> 
> For those of you who are too young to remember the early 90’s when the internet was young, there was a very iconic actor of the time named “David Hasselhoff”  
> A very popular office prank was often played on people who would leave their desk without locking their computer with a password. We would actively seek out these poor, trusting fools and while they were off using the restroom or getting coffee, their hapless computer was under attack.   
> They would come back, the little flying toaster screen-saver floating across the monitor, oblivious to the horror that awaited them. Suddenly, when they opened everything up, the big, smiling face of David Hasselhoff would be right there, staring at them from their desktop. 
> 
> Such were the computer pranks of the time.


	9. Bonds and Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, the most difficult part of life is accepting the pain
> 
> and understanding that not all your strength has to come from within.

    Keith blinked the ice crystals from his eyelashes. The warm air filled his lungs and he fell into Hunk’s arms as the healing pod released him. 

 

    “Hey there, Tiger. Welcome back.” Those words were the most wonderful thing Keith had ever heard. He had been half afraid, going into the pod that he’d never wake because the castle was destroyed while he was healing, or worse, that he’d wake to a wall of grinning, purple faces.

Voice rough, he asked, “Status?”

 

    He heard Lance snort from his left. “Right to the point, as always. Ok, here’s the brief version: Found Shiro. He’s shook up but Pidge didn’t hurt him, at least not physically.” Keith tensed in Hunk’s arms. Lance continued, ticking off points on his fingers, “We turned off their tracking system, which was on Pidge’s laptop, by the way. She’d been talking to them all week and had sent our new coordinates every time we went through a wormhole. We jumped to a safe system about 28 hours ago and Allura’s been out like a light ever since. No sign of any Galra ships. Coran’s working over the engines, shut down the whole system and is rebooting it. Apparently all this jumping stressed them out real bad.”

 

    Keith nodded. “Good. Glad we’re safe for now. Pidge?”

 

    Hunk’s voice was soft, “She’s gone, Keith. Took the stealth pod after she stabbed you and we think she went to the Galra.”

 

    Keith’s mind reeled. No. It wasn’t possible. Not Pidge.

 

    Hunk, sensing his distress, offered the most basic comfort he could give, “C’mon, let’s go and get some food into you. You’ll feel better. And, as soon as you’re on your feet, Lance and I are heading back here to finish healing up.” Keith nodded and all three of them headed for the paladin’s common room, supporting each other.

 

\---

 

    Shiro sat listlessly on the couch, slouched over with his hands hanging limply. Keith pulled out of Hunk’s supporting arms and staggered over to drop down next to the black paladin. “Shiro?” Keith took one hand in his and was immediately concerned by the lack of reaction and the lax, aimless stare. “She tried to kill us, but not you. What did she do to you?” 

 

    “Worse.” Lance’s voice was harsh with anger. “We found a program on her laptop. Seems she programmed the castle comms to whisper things at him when there was no one else around.” 

 

    Keith’s head whipped around to face Lance, “What kind of things?”

 

    “You don’t want to know.” and the scowl on Lance’s face told him exactly how the others felt about that. Keith turned back and looked into Shiro’s empty eyes. He could imagine plenty of things. How could she have been that cruel?

 

    Hunk and Lance went towards the kitchenette to put together some food, leaving Keith alone with Shiro for a while.

 

    Keith reached out towards his oldest friend, cupped his face between his hands and pressed his forehead to Shiro’s. He wanted to bring his friend back. No, he needed to bring his friend back. Both of them. For a moment he wondered what was happening to Pidge but there was nothing he could do for her right now. Shiro, on the other hand… what could he do for Shiro?

He did the only thing he could think of. He reached out his mind like they did during the bonding exercises.

 

    Keith felt the warm energy of his lion surround him, fire burning in his core. He let the flames of his desire reach out, seeking the steady, firm core that knew as Shiro. 

 

   Empty. It’s as if he simply wasn’t there. Mind as empty as his eyes. Desperately, he went deeper, calling with his entire soul. 

 

   Red growled in his mind. He ignored her. That was a mistake. Claws in his head, Teeth bared. Fury incarnate. Keith’s head exploded from within and he soon found himself cradling his own head in his hands. “Ow. What was that for, Red?”

 

    A jab of anger, and worry. A lick of apology.

He sighed. “Fine, I’m listening now.” A deep breath, he let himself settle into his own mind and focused on her.

 

    She nudged him deeper.

He let his focus drift with her. 

He tasted starlight and wind, the power of the endless sky.

 

    Black Lion.

She was large in his mind, a measuring presence and he felt insignificant. 

 

    Red chuffed. At least she was amused, even if it was at his expense. Still, it broke him out of his awe and firmed his resolve.

 

    “Show me,” he whispered. “Help me find him.”

Golden eyes blinked slowly in his mind, became stars. He fell into them, his own lion a fiery presence at his back, anchoring and giving a way home.  _ Shiro! Where are you? _

 

    Lance gasped and Hunk left off arranging food on the plates to see what the blue paladin was looking at. Keith was sitting with his forehead pressed against Shiro’s and was he… glowing? Hunk blinked again. No, he wasn’t. And yet, he was. Hunk felt drawn towards them. Yellow purred in the back of his head.

 

    “Hunk, what are you doing?” Lance tugged on his arm as he drifted towards the pair on the couch.

 

    “I, I think we need to help, Lance.”

 

    “Help with what?” Lance waved at the two of them. “They’re not doing anything!”

 

    “Keith’s doing something. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something we need to do too.”

 

    “Why?” Lance left off the food preparations and followed Hunk back over to the couch. 

 

    “Just trust me on this, Lance. I have a feeling this is important.” Hunk’s voice trailed off as he knelt next to Keith and touched his forehead to Shiro’s as well.

 

    Still irritated, but not wanting to be left out, Lance joined the other paladins. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and sank into the merged awareness, muttering something about overtime.

 

    Keith felt them in the darkness. The cool, aqua sparkle of Lance/Blue and the gritty texture of Hunk/Yellow. With a feeling of great relief he reached out and pulled them closer. They knew what he wanted. He felt their support and impatience. Together they bent their joined will to the task of recovering Black’s paladin.

 

\-----

 

    Yawning, Allura headed for the kitchen. A good, long sleep was just what she had needed. And another dozen good naps might bring her back up to normal energy levels. That and a lot of food.

 

    All thoughts of food were forgotten when she walked in on the group of paladins in a circle with their heads touching. “Oh. My…” Allura’s Altean eyes saw clearly what Hunk had only been glimpsing.  Never taking her eyes off the tableau, she reached over and pushed the comm button, “Coran, you need to come up here and see this.”

 

    A short time later, Coran too was standing in the doorway with an expression of amazement.

“By the Ancients! I never expected them to accomplish this level of bonding, Princess.”

 

    “I know, aren’t they an amazing species? They give me hope, Coran.”

 

    He nodded thoughtfully. “They aren’t much to look at and they’re weaker than the most puny of Altean babes but they do have qualities.”

 

    Creativity, tenacity, adaptability. There was a long list, one the two Alteans had often discussed quietly on dark evenings when the humans were playing games or discussing the fine points of things that Coran and Allura simply had no point of reference for. Sometimes the Alteans felt just as misplaced as the Humans. Last of their kind, it would have been easy to fall into despair, to lose hope for the future and simply surrender to the inevitable. But, when these five strange beings had woken them from endless sleep it had started them both on a journey of endless surprises. 

 

    Allura had grasped the possibilities immediately. Five strangers, five lions. She believed the universe had sent them to her, to reawaken Voltron and bring back that force of good. With all her indomitable will, she had convinced the young humans of the need and of their own ability to accomplish the task. And they were so very young....

Still, they surprised her at every turn, often managing to do things that even she never thought they’d be able to do. Their own passions renewed her faith.

 

    “Healers, Coran. That aura…” she whispered.

 

    “Yes, Princess. I haven’t seen an aura like that since we lost the last of the Altean Healers.”

 

    She cocked her head to the side. “It’s not quite the same.” Patchy, stuttering, uneven. “What are they trying to do?”

 

    “I believe they are attempting to restore the black paladin to balance.”

 

    “Can they?” she asked softly.

 

    “No,” he replied sadly, after a moment of study and reflection. “There’s something that’s missing. However, they may be able to help more than you think. Let’s leave them to it and see what surprise they give us today.” With that almost-cheerful thought, he guided the young sovereign into the kitchen and prepared her favorite breakfast for her.

 

\-----

 

    The darkness. It was cold, smothering, but safe. 

It required nothing of him, not even his existence.

Safe.

 

_     Safe from what? _ The thought intruded into the void.

A question that triggered motion.

Triggered a sense of time and loss of time.

He shied away from questions and thoughts. They would bring the other things.

 

_     What other things? _ More questions. Questions led to answers. Things that required decisions.

He was tired of making decisions. Bad decisions.

He just wanted the quiet darkness, the not-being.

 

_     Being what? _ Thoughts crept in. Thoughts with names.

Champion. Killer. Murderer. Betrayer.

Paladin. Leader. Savior.

Shiro.

 

_     Shiro. _

No! He didn’t want that. He couldn’t be that. It hurt. Too much, it hurt. 

He sank deeper, burrowed deeper into the empty darkness, tried to block out the meaning of that thought… that name.

His name.

 

_     Shiro. Where are you? _

Here. Not here.

The darkness was changing, not empty. He was afraid.

He resisted the call. It was a call.

A call to bring him back.

Back to what?

 

    Pain. Loss. Grief. Pain.

Always the pain.

He was tired of pain. 

He was tired.

He was.

_ Shiro. _

_ Paladin. _

 

_     Come, Paladin. It is time. _

Time for what?

_     Time to return. _

 

    “No.”

 

_     Yes. _

 

    “I… am afraid.” he whispered into the dark.

 

_     But you are not alone. _

 

    “I am. I am alone. I have to be.”

 

_     But I am here. _

 

    “Stay away, I’ll only hurt you.”

 

_     You cannot hurt me, cubling.  _ Golden points of light glistened in the darkness.

He turned away.  _ You are mine and I am yours and we are together. _

 

    The pain was creeping back in, the comfort of the darkness was receding and being replaced by the burning light. He sobbed with the loss. The light cradled him but at the same time forced him to face the pain and accept it. He struggled but it held him until he was exhausted.

 

_     Silly cubling, why do you insist on doing this alone? It is unnecessary. _

 

    “It keeps the others safe.” he choked on the words. Keep them away, keep them safe from the monster he was.

 

_     Am I a monster? _

 

“No!” It was an involuntary rejection of the idea. 

 

_     I saw everything you are and chose you. You are mine.  _ With that came the feeling of acceptance of everything he was, everything he wasn’t, everything he could and could not be.

He was forced to accept in that moment, himself.

_ Come, Paladin. The others seek you. _

 

    “Why?”

 

_     They are not whole without you. You are needed. You are wanted. _

 

    “So they can form Voltron.”

 

_     For yourself. _

 

    He felt them, calling him. They were on the other side of the wall.

                Wall? He realized there was a wall in the emptiness.  

                A wall of words, of thoughts, of… Voices. The voices that spoke to him every day.

                He stepped back, away from the wall.

 

_     I am here, Paladin. You are not alone. They are on the other side and you will not be alone.  _

 

    “Is this the only way?”

 

    Affirmation. 

He eyed the wall with trepidation. It was thick, fluid, black, and hateful.

 

**_Your fault … should have been you… you should have died…_ ** **** **_your fault…_ ** **** **_monster_ ** **** **_… die, monster… killer… blood, on your hands… Champion…_ ** **** **_killer…  cannot save them_ ** **** **_… die, all die_ ** **** **_… because of you... all die… you cannot save them… failure…_ ** ****

 

Truth.

 

_     Words. _

 

    “True words.” his tone was sour with regret.

 

_     Is this wall of words all that you are? _

 

    “No.” A hesitant admission.

 

_     Then be more, cub. _

 

    Did he want to go back and face all that? No. But really, that was the wrong question. Did he need to go back? Shiro thought of the paladins, of the people of Earth… of Pidge. He was needed. He thought of Keith, who had waited a year in practical exile never giving up hope of his return. He was wanted. He thought of Allura and her absolute faith that what they were doing needed to be done. It was something he could do. But not alone.

 

_     You are not alone. _

 

    “I am not alone.” Shiro took a deep breath and stepped through the wall.

It clung to him, like thick molasses. It was nasty. It smelled of rot and decay, hate and doubt.

He had stepped through but the thick tendrils clung to him. He gagged and started to fall.

His arms shot outwards of their own volition, grasping for something to catch him.

 

    There was a roar. Fire engulfed him. It burned the clinging bits of hatefulness away. It surged deep into his soul and he felt strengthened by its passion. Water laughed and swirled around him, it washed away more of the taint and wore down the rough edges of his pain. He smiled for the first time in what felt like forever. Earth was simply there. Solid, a rock. A base to stand on, a center. He would not be lost again.

 

    Shiro took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Bright light and relieved smiles greeted him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... they all survived. How about that? Pidge will be so disappointed in the failure of her traps. Even Shiro is back on his shaky feet. Truly, what she did to him was just plain MEAN.   
> Don't be a bully, kids.
> 
> I had fun exploring the possible internal workings of the paladin bonds. And I really loved imagining the interactions with the lions.  
> Hope you're enjoying it too.
> 
> Next update will be Thursday, or maybe Friday. I am currently engaged in a horrific battle with my muse who is deviously attempting to get me to turn the ending into something romantic between Keith and Pidge. (Don't worry, I won't let her. I will find some other way to appease the demon within.) 
> 
> In the meantime... thank you all for sticking with me.


	10. Mistaken Intentions and Identities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _No one will come for me. I killed my friends. I betrayed them and killed them. My family would be ashamed of me. I don’t even want to find them, now. I hope they’ll never know._
> 
>  
> 
> “We go in, blast a hole in the side of their ship and storm the damn place, killing everyone we see until we find her. And then blow it up the rest of the way on the way out.” Keith’s violent monotone was grimly serious.

    Pidge wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. In retrospect, she probably should have. The cold, harsh walls of a Galra prison cell. She had rescued people from these cells before so she knew there was no point in trying to escape. There was no escape without assistance. Especially, not for her.

 

    She sat on the floor with her back to the wall. After all, there was nowhere else to sit; no furniture, no blankets, no comfort. The commanders considered it irrelevant. Why would prisoners require comfort? She curled herself up with her knees to her chest and hid her face in her folded arms. There was nothing to look at, no one to talk to. Only scratches and scars in the floor, visible in the lurid green light coming in through the bars in the door. The loneliness might be the worst part, but there were so many things wrong with this scenario...it was hard to tell.

 

_She had stepped off the shuttle with little more than her armor. Everything else had been left behind; laptop she wouldn’t need, bayard had been confiscated by the green lion when it had encased Keith in the particle barrier, tools...well it had been pointless to bring those along so she’d left them on the shuttle. It didn’t matter, the Galra had promised to provide for all her needs, after all. They had promised assistance in finding her family. They had promised… a lot of horse shit._

 

_The Galra commander hadn’t even bothered to meet her, he had simply sent a couple of subordinates to collect her from the shuttle bay. At gunpoint, as it turned out. Her “escort”._

 

_Straight into the arms of a Druid interrogator. That was terrifying. Pain was not something she dealt with easily. Physical pain, well that  was something she had managed to train herself to work through, to a certain extent. It was basically ignoring physical sensations, like the need to go to the bathroom, or hunger, or even blisters. Getting thrown against a wall and having her arms wrenched out of the sockets, that she could have dealt with…for a while. And she did withstand it...for a while. The Galra soldiers liked to take their time making people scream, it was more fun that way. But first, before the soldiers, came the druids._

 

_It had been horrifying, having her brain turned inside out, every memory pulled out and examined, relived in excruciating detail. Questions… there had been no questions. No need to ask when the druid could simply take the information they wanted straight out of her brain like sorting through a basket of shiny beads. All her thoughts, all her ideas, hopes and dreams, just bits of data for them to examine and discard._

_Her family… discarded._

_Her planet… known. Irrelevant. They would deal with it in time. Discarded._

_The Castle-ship… picked through and examined. Mostly known._

_The Paladins… picked through, mulled over, pulled out and examined. Her feelings, her knowledge. Her theories on their bonds and relationships, and there were quite a few; examined and catalogued._

_Her adjustments to the Altean Technology… this she tried to hide as long as she could. But in the end, they prised even that out of her. Every twiddle, hypothesis and test. Successes. Failures. It was if there was something inside her own head betraying her the way she had betrayed Voltron. Bitter dregs indeed._

 

    Now, sore and exhausted in both body and spirit, she sat and shivered. Cold? Yes, it was cold. They’d taken her temperature-controlled armor long ago. But it wasn’t the cold, it was the fear. Sentries patrolled the corridors. She counted their steps. She counted the intervals. It was exactly the same as Shiro had described. She didn’t bother counting the tears that traced down her cheeks to be absorbed by the rough prison uniform. The headache had returned in spades. All she could do was endure. For as long as she could. Although, it was hard to think of a reason why she should.

 

_No one will come for me. I killed my friends. I betrayed them and killed them. My family would be ashamed of me. I don’t even want to find them, now. I hope they’ll never know._

 

\-----

 

    Keith slammed his hand down on the table. Plates jumped, and so did a couple of paladins. “That’s not good enough! We have to rescue her NOW!”

 

    Shiro rubbed his eyes and sighed. He felt twitchy, jittery. He wanted to be doing anything else but this. The voices of doubt and derision were still murmuring in the back of his head. His lion stood guard, though. She denied them, and her presence lent him strength. He could do this. “Do you have a suggestion as to how?”

 

    “We go in, blast a hole in the side of their ship and storm the damn place, killing everyone we see until we find her. And then blow it up the rest of the way on the way out.” Keith’s violent monotone was grimly serious.

 

    Hunk raised his hand tentatively, “Um, wouldn’t it be better to do something, well, sneakier?”

 

    Keith turned on him with narrowed eyes, “Fine. Exactly what do you have in mind, since the only stealth vehicle we have is the green lion, which isn’t exactly available at the moment?”

 

    “Not available, I might point out, because her pilot went over to the enemy!” While accurate, Lance’s comment did not do anything to cool Keith’s temper.

 

    “It. Wasn’t. Her.” Keith growled each word.

 

     “Ok, man. You keep saying that but it was her. It wasn’t anybody but her. All the programs she used are right on her laptop. She’s the one that drove Shiro bonkers, programmed my shower to boil me alive, crushed Hunk like sandwich meat between two slices of bread and tattled on our location to the Galra fleets for over a week. Oh, and she stabbed you with a soldering iron and left you to die! Did I miss anything? Sounds like our vicious little gremlin to me. By the way, stay out of the training deck, we haven’t scrubbed her Kill-Keith program out of there yet.”

 

    Keith countered with the only thing he could think of. “When was the last time Pidge left her laptop open?”

 

    Silence. It was true. She had three different passwords just to unlock the desktop. Fort Knox, home of the Global Gold Depository had weaker security. Pidge, in fact, hacked in whenever she got bored and inserted old computer games onto their systems.

 

    “It wasn’t her,” he continued, “It’s something else. Something is controlling her. I don’t know why else she would leave.” Keith’s voice was just tired now.

 

    “To get her family back.” Hunk pointed out. “It’s what drives her, it’s what’s always driven her.”

 

    “How, in the name of sanity, is going over to the Galra supposed to get her family back?” Keith was astounded at the sheer stupidity of such an idea.

 

    Lance sighed. “Hunk found it. They got a virus into her laptop. It put a bunch of false info into her system implying that we are the bad guys and Allura was behind the whole Kerebos incident. Yeah, I know,” he said, forestalling the protests that were about to break out around the table. “Thin. Like, paper thin. I wouldn’t have fallen for it. Still, it’s the only explanation we have.”

 

    Keith hissed through his teeth. “That damn flash drive.”

 

    Hunk nodded, “Yeah, found that, destroyed it, just about finished cleaning out all the gunk off her laptop. Checked the castle’s systems and looks like the Altean firewalls were good enough to keep the infection from spreading.”

 

    Keith thought about the purple lights in the back of Pidge’s eyes. _Maybe it wasn’t the only virus they planted._ He ground his teeth in frustration. He had failed. His one job had been to protect Pidge and look what happened…

 

    Lance cleared his throat. When Keith looked up, Lance gave him one of those patented grins. “Don’t worry, dude. We’re not giving up on her.” There was steel in his voice and a bit of a smirk, “Listen up, I’ve got an idea…”

 

\-----

 

    There was gunfire in the corridor.

 

    Pidge lifted her head groggily, curiosity stirring within for the first time in an age.

It was harder to think every day. Her inner time clock was so disrupted she had lost all track of time. She used to count the times the sentries passed but she had lost track of the number of cycles somewhere around 900. There was no point in it. Every day was the same.

 

    Unless the soldiers came. She always hoped they would move past her cell, find someone else… but sometimes they stopped. And, sometimes there was a druid with them.

 

    She licked her swollen lips, ignoring the sting when the cut started bleeding again, and tried to open her right eye a bit more. The swelling there had gone down, she was able to get it open almost halfway. She struggled to stand. If something was happening she wanted to be prepared, even if she couldn’t remember what for.

 

 _There is no point. Death is the only escape._ True. Still, a tiny spark of stubbornness insisted that she stand.

 

    Pidge staggered clumsily, her right arm hung limply at her side. It was currently useless since she wasn't able to get it back into the socket. Her shoulder hit the wall and jarred everything. Pain lanced through her nerves, jangling and throbbing its way up to her head where it exploded behind her eyes. Tears welled up, her head hammered in time with her pulse and she panted. _Why am I bothering?_

 

    Whatever was going on in the corridor would pass. The sentries would resume their rounds. The soldiers would come again and take her away for some “fun”. Nothing would change in the long run, nothing at all until she finally stopped fighting and surrendered to the dark. _Fighting is pointless. No one escapes._

 

    There was shouting. Dully, she noted it. That was new. No one shouted around here, they only screamed. Screams of pain and terror. No one ever shouted in defiance. No one but her. At least, she used to.

 

    Blaster fire echoed and she could see bright flashes through the bars of the door. Whatever was happening was coming closer.

 

    “Here! Get these open.” a familiar voice echoed faintly off the walls. She often heard it in her nightmares, the ones that filled her nose with the smell of burning flesh and white-hot iron. Not real after all. She sighed in disappointment. Still, she would stand, as she always did. Distantly, there was the clang of metal against metal. She shivered again and braced herself against the cold wall, facing the door.

 

    The sounds advanced down the corridor at an ominously slow pace, the metallic creak of the doors being opened, the shouts and cries, the sounds of blaster fire. They were just a few feet down the hallway… and then there was a loud bang as the door to her cell flew open and a dark figure stood framed in the lurid light.

 

    Pidge dropped into a fighting stance out of habit, but it was hard to maintain. Her legs trembled and only one arm worked properly. This was gonna be a really short fight.

The figure stepped into the cell. Every movement was familiar. Her blood chilled and gave her shivers up her spine.  


    “No…” not again. She hated this dream. “I hate you. Why do you keep doing this to me?” Shapeshifted aliens impersonating her friends. Telling her lies of how much they loved her as they broke her fingers. Telling her how it was for her own good as they sliced her belly open. Telling her they wanted to save her...

 

    White suit, dark accents. That’s the color they’d be in normal light. Here, it was just a wash of purple and blood-red.

 

    Red. That color was red and the sword in the figure’s hand was well-known to her.

Pidge felt herself slumping sideways across the wall, she was unable to stop it. She had no control of her limbs, nothing responded to her demands to run, to flee. A scream of fear bubbled in her throat. This one was the worst.

 

    “Pidge?” It called her name.

 

   It was after her, stalking its way closer, a slow shuffle.

Being held in a Galra prison was bad enough, the Galra she could understand; for a time even survive. This one sounded so real, so true… there was none of the funny echo effect that often accompanied a druid-dream. Maybe this wasn’t a shapeshifted alien after all. Maybe it wasn’t a dream. But, that would mean… this one was real. But he was dead. Violently dead and she had smiled when he screamed. That meant, this one was a ghost. A real ghost. Just like the stories her brother used to scare her with when she was little.

 

    No, don’t let it be a ghost. The fear whined deep in her throat.

 

    It had come to take her. It was revenge for killing them, murdering them all and destroying Voltron. They would take her and she would become just like them.

The monsters in Katie’s closet were finally going to get her.

 

    Darkness swirled in the corners of her vision. She managed to lurch away from the wall, just one step, another. Anything to get away from the ghost. Two steps were all she managed before the blackness swallowed her. _Daddy!_ Her mind screamed.

 

      The figure swore darkly and jumped for her as she fell into blackness.

 

    Keith caught her, his bayard clattering to the floor. Her limp form was underweight and beaten up. It seemed even more fragile than it had been the last time they’d been in this position. “Pidge!” Keith fought a burning urge to destroy every creature that had laid a hand on his partner.

“Guys,” he growled into his comm, “I found her. She’s alive. Let’s get out of here. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sad note: Poor depressed baby.
> 
> Happy note: Oh la! 'Tis a rescue!
> 
> Sad note: Tortured baby. Wrathful friend.
> 
>  
> 
> math note: The guards pass every 22 minutes. Pidge lost count after 900 cycles.  
> (Yes, she was there for almost 2 weeks before she lost count)


	11. Dead Friends and Other Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rescued from the Galra ship, but can they rescue her from the prison of her own mind?
> 
>  
> 
> “No!” she shrieked as she slid away from him along the wall. “You’re dead. You’re all dead. This is a stupid trick and you’ve tried it before and I didn’t believe it then, either!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, so sorry to make you wait for this chapter!  
> Here it is and I hope it was worth the wait.
> 
>  
> 
> ..

Coran met them as they returned to the castle. “I’ve got a healing pod all set up and ready to go, Paladins!”

 

Keith hovered anxiously as Hunk carried Pidge’s tiny form past the advisor and into the common room. “No, not yet. She looks bad, but none of her injuries are life-threatening. We can’t just pop her into a pod. There’s stuff going on in her head that we need to fix first, or we’ll end up in the same state we were after the last mission.” 

 

Lance quipped, “Personally, I think Keith just wants to hide all the pointy objects before she wakes up.” Keith stopped dead in his tracks and slowly turned with a glare towards the blue paladin. “Hey, man,” Lance dropped a pile of green armor in the corner by the doorway and then brought his hands up in a gesture of peacemaking, “I was just trying to lighten the mood. The plan worked, didn’t it? We got her.”

 

“And the shuttle too!” Hunk chimed in. “We managed to grab that on our way out.”

 

Keith let out a breath, releasing the tension he’d been holding in a tight grip. “Yeah. Good job, Hunk.”

 

Shiro broke in and prodded the group forward. “Let’s get somewhere more comfortable and then we can figure out the next step.”

 

“Don’t get too comfortable, Paladins,” Coran warned. “You seem to have stirred up a cornac’s nest and as soon as they pull themselves together, that fleet’s going to be after us again. Princess Allura’s got us running at full speed but she’s reluctant to make a wormhole jump. The engines have developed a nasty resonance that indicates they may be out of alignment. I noticed it when we jumped into this system. The infracells have taken quite a beating. After all, it did take us a while to find this exact fleet again.”

 

__ _ Too long, _ Keith mused as he looked down at Pidge’s battered face. The castle lighting was better than the Galra ships and now the clear patterns of bruising from multiple beatings were easy to read on her slight form. 

 

“Guys, her arm is dislocated. We’ll have to pop it back in.” Hunk was right and fortunately, that really did seem to be the only serious injury she was suffering from. Scanners on the way back had told them much more than they wanted about how she had spent the last couple weeks. Bruises, cuts, scrapes, more bruises… things that made Keith’s blood boil and brought Lance close to actual swear words. The dislocated arm… but no broken bones, no significant internal bleeding. Shiro’s conclusion was that the Galra druids had just healed anything major. Grim silence filled the room as they all gathered around in the couch pit. 

 

“No problem. I got this,” Hunk’s confidence was reassuring but Keith wasn’t really listening, so the large paladin was forced to step carefully so he didn’t trip over him. “Just stand back, Keith, you can count on me for this.” 

 

Keith hesitated and Lance smirked, “Aww, doesn’t want to let go of his girlfriend.”

 

Startled, Keith stared at Lance in shock. “What? No! It’s not, I don’t…” He sputtered as he glanced at Pidge. She groaned as Hunk sat on the couch and settled her on his lap. He maneuvered her into a better position and Shiro slid in beside him to assist. Keith glowered at Lance and stammered, “Where the hell did you get an idea like that?”

 

“Oh, I dunno, maybe just the way you hover over her. The way you hounded all of us for weeks to search for her and not give up. Maybe it’s the pink tinge around your ears.”

 

Keith looked away, face burning. He took a deep breath and collected himself by pulling off his gauntlets and tucking them inside his helmet. He ran his fingers slowly through his hair before turning back to Lance, calm once more, at least on the outside. “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t think of her that way.” His voice took on a pensive tone and he lowered it to almost a whisper, “I just… she means a lot to me, but it’s not just her. You do too. The same with Shiro and Hunk. I would literally be ripped apart inside if anything ever happened to you and I could have prevented it. Even the princess and Coran. I can’t lose you guys. You're my family now.” He paused for a long moment while Lance’s eyebrow crawled up into his hairline in astonishment at this sudden, heartfelt confession. “I guess I did go a little bit overboard but… since I lost my family I’ve never let myself get close to anyone. Not until I met Shiro, and look how that turned out.” His voice rose in pitch with every tense word. “I thought I’d lost him, too. Now, I have you guys and although I couldn’t do anything to keep my parents safe, I swear, I won’t let anything happen to you, or her, or any of the others as long as it’s within my power to stop it.” Keith’s passionate tirade trailed off. He shook his head.

 

“Umm, that’s a little bit intense there, my dude, you sure you’re ok?”

 

“Lance, she got hurt while I was supposed to be protecting her. And so, everything that’s happened since then is all my fault.” 

 

Shaking off his amazement at the revelation, Lance scoffed, “Gosh! That’s unaccountably sweet of you and I hope the next time I’m mind-wiped to be evil, you’ll swoon over me, too. But dude… not every bad thing that happens is your fault.”

 

“Well, this is!” Keith’s voice was ragged, “I was guarding her and they got to her anyway, Lance! The druids got to her and used her against us. They wanted to destroy Voltron and they almost succeeded.” The deep bitterness lodged in his throat and he couldn’t continue. He could only stand there and watch as Hunk and Shiro discussed battlefield first aid.

 

“Keith…” Lance’s voice was soft as he put his hand on the paladin’s shoulder. “look at me.”

 

Hands clenching and unclenching, Keith finally dragged his eyes upwards and took in Lance’s sympathetic smile. “Keith,” he repeated without a hint of his earlier jocularity, “Pidge hacks into their systems every single time we get onto a Galra ship or base. They know this, man. She leaves little poisonous presents in her wake like calling cards. It was only a matter of time before they thought of a way to turn that against us. It was Not. Your. Fault.” Keith dragged a ragged breath into his lungs and Lance continued, “That attack was not something you could have protected her from. None of us could have. Don't let guilt get the better of you.”

 

Keith nodded slowly and thoughtfully. Lance continued, “In fact, I hate to say it but none of us would be alive right now without you and your stubborn mullet-head.” and then Lance cut him off before Keith could do more than open his mouth, “And don’t you dare say anything like, ‘It wouldn’t have happened at all if I had been faster/better/more perfect’ because I  will only remind you that she’d still have been lying on the floor of that control room, or another one somewhere else, no matter which of us had been backing her up. It’s entirely possible she might have even been alone if we’d been overwhelmed and needed your help. And then where would she be? You saved her. Several times. Now shut up about it and get your head back in the game.”

 

Harsh words but they did what they were intended to do and Keith found himself settling into a less chaotic frame of mind. Just in time, too. Hunk nodded to Shiro and the black paladin carefully wrapped his hands around Pidge’s arm, one near the shoulder joint and one by her elbow, felt for the socket and with a skillful manipulation, pulled. Things shifted and with a grating sensation and an almost audible pop, her arm settled back into place.

 

Pidge screamed her way into wakefulness.

 

Hunk was suddenly holding a shrieking demon and with a frightened yelp he practically pushed her off his lap. Keith didn’t blame him. It was almost like holding a bag with an enraged cat. Not something you really wanted to hold onto if you valued your skin.

 

“Pidge! Calm down, you’re ok. You’re safe. We’re here. You’re safe! It’s ok.” Shiro’s voice droned in a soothing monotone. It was several minutes before it finally registered with her and she froze in place.

 

“No.” she sobbed harshly. “Not this again. I won’t let you do this to me again!” She scrambled to her feet and stumbled across the room until her back was against a wall, she then turned and stared at them all like a frightened animal, one eye swollen and bruised, both of them wide with fear. Sobbing breath heaving through her lungs.

 

The shock in the room was almost universal. Keith was swiftly recalling some of the things she had said back on the Galra ship and his heart was sinking. Shiro looked both sad and pained as understanding took hold.

 

“What the ding-dong was that?” Lance was the first to express the confusion they all felt. 

 

Shiro shook his head. “Druids.” He choked on that single word. His voice was soft and full of pain. “They got to her.” The other paladins turned and stared at him, realizing that of them all, Shiro knew. 

 

“What? What did they do to her? What do you mean, Shiro?”

 

He shook his head. “They turn your head inside out,” He whispered. “Truth and lies, facts and dreams cooked up by your own imagination, everything gets mixed up to the point where you just don’t know what’s real and what’s not.” Bitterness and self-loathing dripped in his tone.

 

Hunk slid closer and put a strong, comforting hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “Do you think you can convince her we’re real?” 

 

Keith had already lost interest in the conversation and was working his way across the room to Pidge with his hand outstretched. “Pidge, come on, it’s us. Doesn’t matter what happened before. We can talk about it later and we can fix whatever needs fixing.”

 

“No!” she shrieked as she slid away from him along the wall. “You’re dead. You’re all dead. This is a stupid trick and you’ve tried it before and I didn’t believe it then, either!”

 

“We’re not dead. Everyone is alive.”

 

“You are!” she screamed. “I killed you! I took a soldering iron off of Hunk’s work bench and I stabbed you in the eye.” She began sobbing between words, “I did. It was me. You screamed, and grabbed my arm and  you tried to pull it out… but it only lasted a minute. And I watched… I watched you die.” She whispered, “My fingers were sticky. I couldn’t wash it off. There wasn’t anything to wash it off… I should have stocked some alcohol so I could wash it off but I didn’t and so I couldn’t wash it off...”

 

Keith was shaken, but kept it tightly inside. The image of that hot soldering iron in front of his face was one that would haunt his nightmares for a long time. He kept his voice low and steady as he stepped towards her, “No, Pidge. That’s not what happened. Your lion put up the particle barrier. Don’t you remember? You left, but I was still alive. Lance and Hunk are alive too.”

 

Shiro approached cautiously from her other side and she startled. “Katie, I know you’re confused right now but you need to listen. The Galra lied to you, they planted false data in your computer. You know it was a lie because you ended up in a Galra cell.”

 

Her fractured attention shifted to Shiro even as she kept an eye on Keith. “Lies. Yes, everything is lies.”

 

That was encouraging. He took a deep breath, “Yes, they lied to you. But we’re your friends and you can trust us. I won’t lie to you.” 

 

Keith watched in alarm as a glint of purple sparked in the back of her eyes. She tensed and hissed. “No. It’s all lies. All of it! You’re dead.” _ Shapeshifters.  _ She twitched, her eyes darting towards the door. Keith moved to cut off that escape route and she snarled. “Shapeshifters. You’re Altean shapeshifters and that’s how you’re impersonating my friends! Well it won’t work and I won’t give away any more secrets. You’ll have to kill me this time.” Her voice broke and she wailed pathetically, “You have to! Please...”  _ They won’t kill. They never kill. It’s too much fun to torture and play, taint and defile everything they touch. _

 

Shiro grabbed for her and she dodged him. Lance yelled encouragements as he and Hunk moved to block off other possible exits. She was fast. It was amazing how easily adrenaline could overcome all her injuries. For one bitter moment Keith almost wished she had a broken leg or something else that would slow her down. Perhaps, he mused, they shouldn’t have re-socketed her arm quite so soon.

 

Still, eventually she made an error. Dodging Shiro had brought her right into Keith’s reach and he grabbed her by one arm, swinging her around and managing to get her other one as well. She panicked and screamed. He twisted and blocked her as she attempted to kick and bite him. He kept it up for as long as he could, trying to soothe her. But, finally, the stress got to him and he lost his temper.

 

“That’s it! I’m done with this tender bullshit.” All the frustration burst forth inside him and without any real thought of the consequences, Keith hauled back and punched the small paladin. Once. Full in the abdomen and just hard enough to completely knock the breath out of her. Pidge’s eyes watered as she wheezed, a look of shocked betrayal plastered on her face. In the lull, while the other paladins gasped in protest and she could do nothing to stop him, he grabbed her head in both hands and pressed his forehead to hers.

 

“Keith! Wait...oh snap, here we go again.” Lance dropped his hands to his side and sighed. Hunk echoed him and slouched his way over to where Keith and Pidge knelt locked in a mental embrace. Shiro looked confused. “C’mon Shiro. Link up with your lion and let’s dive in. It’s like the 3-D version of Allura’s paladin bonding exercises, or... well, maybe it’s like scuba diving. Either way, it’s actually kinda fun.”

 

\-----

 

This time Keith had the sense to bring Red in along with him from the beginning. Unfortunately it wasn’t much help. Pidge’s mindscape wasn’t anything like what he’d been expecting. Instead of an echoing, empty space there was fog. A thick, choking miasma of bleeding black and purple filled with the stench of decay. He gagged. His eyes watered and burned. It was caustic and there was no sign of Pidge anywhere. The red lion rumbled unhappily in the back of his head. He was thankful for her presence. Without Red as his anchor, Keith would have been lost in an instant.

 

Within a blink of time the other paladins were around him. He felt their dismay and disgust. It was horrific. How could she survive in this? Shiro was the one that reacted first. Instinctively, he created a calm space, pulled the other three close to him and spun the clean air around them, allowing breath and focus. His surprise and pleasure at the ability lasted a moment and then firmed into resolve.

 

As they peered into the morass, the questions formed and bounced through their link, 

“How?”

 

“How do we find her?”

 

“How do we even know there’s anything of her left to save?”

 

The flame of Keith’s determination guttered and uncertainty made him cold. What if the Pidge they knew didn’t exist anymore?  Her words echoed in his head.

_ You’re dead. You’re all dead _

_ You’ll have to kill me this time. _

_ I watched you die _

_ I won’t let you do this to me again _

 

It was his fault. He hadn’t protected her. The thought barely had time to form before the blue essence of Lance’s energy smacked Keith in the back of his metaphorical head. “Stop that.” 

 

With regretful thoughts suppressed, Keith turned his attention outwards and watched as magenta currents of energy surged through the black and purple clouds. They reminded him of the flash he’d seen in her eyes, and something else. “Just like the bolt of power that took out Pidge in the control center.” The thought was soft as a whisper.

 

“Like the power that fueled Sendak’s Galra arm,” Shiro mused.

 

“Sendak and that cursed Galra Crystal.” Hunk seethed.

 

“That crystal that infected the castle?” Lance inquired. 

 

“Yes!” Keith grasped at that idea like fresh fuel. The fire inside him surged. “Allura and Coran purged the crystal, and the castle systems. Maybe they can purge this Galra energy too.” Excited now, and with that thought like a lifeline, the red paladin threw himself up and out of the merge before the others could stop him. He gasped as he opened his eyes. The room tilted with the suddenness of his emergence. But, before he could adjust to the sensations of his own body and the real world, he pushed himself towards the wall comm unit. He had to summon Allura.

 

\-----

 

“Keith, I don’t believe this is a good time for experimentation.” Allura glanced over at the cluster of paladins around Pidge with a tiny frown between her eyes. “The Galra fleet is dangerously close. I should be on the bridge.”

 

“Allura,” all pretenses and courtesies were pushed to the side in Keith’s urgent plea, “Without the green paladin, we can't form Voltron and if that happens, it won’t matter how soon those ships get here. We’ll still be dead.” She still looked doubtful. “Please,” he begged, struggling for calm, “We need her. You have to try.”

 

She sighed. “Very well. What would you have me do?”

 

Keith explained his theory. 

 

“So you believe I can purge her quintessence as I did the castle systems?” Allura shook her head sadly. “Balmera crystals and Altean circuitry are merely storage and conduits; relatively easy to empty, clean and refill. Living beings generate their own quintessence.” Painful memories flickered across her face, “It is entirely possible that my efforts will have no effect.”

 

That had not occurred to him. “So, it may be for nothing…” His face hardened. “No. I won't let that happen.” He looked at the group of humans in their still tableau. In the back of his head he noted that all but Pidge were breathing in unison. Interesting. His gaze rested on Shiro. They had found him in that inner dark place. Granted, with the assistance of his lion, but they had brought him out of the dark and the black lion had needed their assistance to do so. It was too bad Pidge’s lion was unavailable.

 

“Green Lion is still unresponsive?” Keith had gone back to thank her for saving him but she had shut herself down. The great, sentient machine was dark and silent. When he asked Red about it, she gave him an impression of sorrow, of impatience, and then simply refused to answer any further. Apparently the inner workings of lion social interactions was not for him to understand. Frustrating. They might have been able to reach her with Green’s assistance.

 

Allura bit her lip with her tiny, perfect teeth. “I suppose you could call it that. Certainly it’s not a situation I’ve ever encountered before.”

 

Keith stood there with a creased brow and a fretful, worried look until Allura gently coughed and brought his attention back to the situation at hand. She smiled as his ears turned red. “Shall we try, then?” 

 

He nodded in relief and renewed hope but paused when Allura held up a cautioning hand. She was looking at the group of paladins. “Be careful, Keith. It is possible that you won’t be able to cure her. And, in fact, you and the others could end up corrupted as well.”

 

It was a chilling thought and one he took with him as he knelt back down in the circle and slowly touched his head against Pidge’s once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. Again, sorry for the delay. I'm still working on tweaking the last chapter but these next couple should be out in a timely manner. Made a small adjustment to the end of chapter 10 to make the flow work. 
> 
> I can see so many little things in here that could use improvement but I feel that I got better as an author with this one. So, it's also important to know when to call it "finished".  
> This one is "finished".  
> Time to move on.
> 
> I do hope things work out for Keith and the paladins in the next chapter...


	12. Landscapes of the Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team searches for Pidge, trapped inside her own mind. Allura attempts to clear the Galra taint from the green paladin with Altean energy. The Galra fleet attacks. And Lance... finds himself uncomfortably alone with the demonic young woman who programmed a castle to boil him alive.
> 
> Don't you hate days like this?

 

 

This would be the third time Keith had experienced this new level of paladin bonding. He easily slipped into synch with his lion and sank once more into the mental landscape. 

 

Pidge’s landscape was all fog and poisonous clouds that dripped a vicious ooze, quite frankly, he found it more terrifying than the blank emptiness that had been Shiro’s. Speaking of Shiro, Keith found and dropped into the pocket of calm that the black paladin had created for them in this terrible place.

 

Mental hands reached out to him and he was pulled into the 4-way link. The lions were present as well, but only in the background. The link itself was paladin-to-paladin which made it oddly different from the sharing of both quintessence and self that was the bond with one’s lion.

Thoughts and feelings surged or flowed through this link, as their natures dictated. Water - Earth - Air - Fire. The different energies melded but didn’t merge. Still, Keith easily picked up on the impression that time had been both longer and shorter in here than it had been for him.

 

He quickly shared his plan and Allura’s concerns. Worries, plans and counter-arguments rippled through the link and then smoothed out again as consensus was reached.

 

A blue-white light shimmered in the corner of his awareness and Keith warned them, “Brace yourselves.”

 

Altean energy surged over and through them. It burned slightly in corners of his soul. Corrupted? Had he been corrupted by this place or was it just a dark spot inside of him reacting to the pure quintessence? An awareness of pain outside his own burst into existence and without a conscious thought he was there with Shiro; seeped in the dark Galra energy as he had been, this was excruciating for him. Keith berated himself for not anticipating this. He was immediately chastised for once more assuming blame for things outside his control. Hunk and Lance also wrapped themselves around Shiro’s essence, shielding where they could and lending supporting for the rest. The quintessence-storm lasted for an endless blink of time.

 

Eventually it passed. The Altean energy burned away the Galra taint around them. In the aftermath, Pidge’s mindscape was changed. The black and dripping clouds were gone, replaced with an almost uniform gray mist. The angry, almost sentient-seeming power bolts were also gone. The quiet stillness was eerie, but less threatening than before. Now it was calm. Completely directionless and calm.

 

Shiro projected a sense of urgency. Keith remembered there was still a Galra fleet bearing down on them from somewhere and there was no telling if Pidge was still in distress somewhere in the mist. Yeah, urgency might be required.

 

They looked around, peering into the concealing fog. 

_ How will we find her? _

 

Shiro, shaken, but more firmly his confident and able self, had the simple answer.

_ We will call her until she finds us _ .  _ As you did for me. _

 

\---

 

Pidge woke but it felt like a dream. She had been trapped in a sinking quagmire of sludge and filth. Repeatedly shocked and struck with bolts of pain. She had cried, she had begged for it to stop but she was trapped and alone in the dark, caustic fog with no one to turn to. She knew it was her own doing, her own carelessness and obsession that had trapped her in this place. Exhausted, she had finally curled into a ball and ignored the slime and burning mist to the best of her ability. Then the cleansing fire came. The blue flame that seared her inside and out. Memory sparked another searing pain, one of purple electricity. They battled inside her soul and even in her numb state she gravitated towards the blue fire.

 

It seemed a cleaner death and that was all she wanted at this point. The blue energy was a gut-wrenching, searing pain but at least it was an honest, and clean agony. It didn’t twist and recede with a slow eating-away just to appear again later. She embraced it and let it sear her to the core. She survived. The sludge became mist and the mist receded. And then as she rested, faintly surprised at her own, continued existence, the elements manifested in her dream and spoke to her.

  
  


Air called to her. It was lost and lonely.

    She let Air pick her up and carry her with it.

         It was without direction or a purpose and that was wrong.

              So, she guided it, showed it where to go.

        Together, they felt and followed another call.

  
  


Fire. It summoned her. Demanded her presence.

    Without fear, she let it embrace her.

         For a time, she became power, in all its forms, and laughed.

    She danced with Air and Fire until she was exhausted.

  
  


Water whispered sweetly to her, a seductive call.

    She smiled and gathered it in.

         It filled her and soothed the lingering pain.

    Rest and Recharge.

  
  


The Air kissed her 

    The Water filled her

         The Fire warmed her

    Earth still called.

 

She answered.

The other elements released her and her feet touched ground.

    It was shaky, afraid, bare and empty.

         Cracked and parched,

    It crumbled beneath her.

 

She called out for the first time and the other elements answered.

  
  


Water poured and ran through the cracks.

    The deep places were clean and ready.

  
  


Air lifted, in a frenzy, and released. 

    Sand fell and filled the gaps in the surface.

  
  


Fire crept through the cracks, heat sealing,

    Creating wholeness. Happiness.

  
  


She touched it again and its solidity gave her a foundation.

    Wonder and curiosity grew within her as the elements swirled around in a frenzied joy.

         Her fingers burrowed into rich soil.

A spark.

    A desire.

         An idea.

 

    A tendril. A sprout. A root.

         A forest. 

              It grew, around and within her.

  
  


And in the forest, a pair of golden eyes. 

    Eyes that were hers.

  
  


\-----

 

She opened her eyes. 

 

She stared into a midnight blue gaze and whispered with amazement, “You're alive.” Her shaking hands cradled rough cheeks in wonder and Keith smiled as he reached up to steady them and give them a squeeze. “You're real.” Her voice was as unsteady as her hands.

 

Tears blurred her vision and Pidge ended up blurting out a breathless squeak as Shiro grabbed her from behind in a desperate hug before he was sandwiched in turn by Hunk and Lance.

 

She then laughed in delight as the Air sparkled in relief. Water gushed and she settled it. Fire was banked low, cautious and hesitant. She breathed new spark into the embers as she smiled into Keith’s eyes. Hunk’s solid presence warded off the chill she felt. She was suddenly aware of the ache of her own body, her resources were low. She ignored the pains. How long had it been since she’d looked at these people with such a sense of belonging? How long since she’d looked at them at all? How long since she’d felt alive? Pidge shivered. Some of it was from cold. She was too thin to maintain her own body heat and reluctantly, they released her as Hunk enveloped her in a fuzzy blanket. Still, their presence warmed her from the inside, more thoroughly than the blanket could.

 

Unfortunately, such intense communion was not meant to last. The delicate and fragile web of inter-paladin communication shattered along with the silence as the Alarms blared and the ship rocked. Allura had already vanished. Startled looks on five faces lasted only a moment. The ship shuddered a second time. Paladins leapt into action.

 

Shiro snapped orders, “Lance, help Pidge into her armor and get to her lion. Hunk, Keith, you’re with me. We'll hold them off, but you two hurry. It's going to take all of us to defeat that Galra fleet.” He grinned in bloodthirsty anticipation, “They chased us across the galaxy and stole one of our own. But now they’ll regret it. Now they have to deal with Voltron.” He snagged his helmet off the couch and toggled the comm as he shoved it on his head, “Princess, Coran, we're on the way.”

 

Lance hadn’t even considered arguing with Shiro’s orders. Of course he'd rather be out there defending the castle, and perhaps he could shoot down a few more ships than Keith for once. But, one look at Pidge and despite the sour look of defiant fury on her face, he could tell that the shaking in he shoulders was from weakness and not suppressed rage. Still, the flip of anxiety in his stomach at the thought of being alone with this lethal demon of a woman made him question, if only for a moment, Shiro’s judgement. She had, after all, programmed the castle to kill them all. What if she did it again?

 

Too late now, the others had scooped up helmets and gauntlets and run for their lions. They were gone. 

 

“I don’t need a babysitter,” she snarled at him.

 

Lance thought briefly of retorting with something quippy like, “Hey, I don't do suicide missions.” and he also thought about saying, “Fine” and leaving. But his mama didn’t raise him that way. And, in his heart, he knew that what Keith had attested to this whole time was true. She hadn’t been herself. Couldn’t he forgive? After all, they’d just been inside her mind and that nasty place would have driven anyone into a killing rage. So, he reached down past his fear and gave her the warmest smile he could muster. Lance had always admired Pidge’s spirit and her quick, clever wit. Even when it was aimed at him. He grinned, “Of course not. But, it's always good to have friends to lean on when things get tough.” Lance held out his hand and told his heart to stop pounding so loud or she would hear it. 

 

Huddled in the blanket, Pidge looked at the outstretched hand as if it would transform and bite her. Her eyes flicked up to his face and back down to his hand. Lance sweated. Eventually, she grunted and slapped her hand into his, allowing him to pull her to her feet. The blanket dropped to the floor.

 

“C’mon, I retrieved your armor from that ship while Keith was getting you. Let's get you prettied up so we can join the party.”

 

The Galra slave uniform was close enough to their own flight suits that Lance didn’t bother trying to get her undressed and into a fresh undersuit. Besides, experience with the drunken female friends of his roommates told him that would be a bad idea. He settled her down on the couch and went to gather up her armor. It was scratched, dented in places and practically covered in filth. A bit like its owner at the moment. 

 

“Lance, stop. I can dress myself.”

 

Her weak plea was blithely ignored. “Nope. I would love to let you feel all empowered but there’s no one here to impress and we’re in a time crunch. If you feel that upset about me manhandling you a bit, well you can try and beat me up on the training deck later.”

 

She humphed. “Try?”

 

He gave her his very best smirk. She rolled her eyes and tiredly closed them. The purple bruise encircling the right one was stark and glaring, along with her exhaustion. Lance’s anxiety dropped a level and his heartbeat steadied as he quickly sorted out her armor and started getting her suited up.

 

The silence in the room was awkward so Lance attempted to fill it. As he began strapping greaves on her legs, he rambled on every subject he could think of. He told her how they'd found her diary, she muttered something that sounded like “Good.” And her told her the codes had all been reset. As arm guards went on, he rambled about the stuff they found on her laptop and Keith’s theories. She nodded absently. 

 

Suspicious now at her lack of response, he mentioned they’d found a bug the size of a cocker spaniel in Shiro’s bed and it purred if you petted it. She nodded. He elaborated that it slept with the man every night and chewed the pillow. She made a non-committal grunt. 

 

“We named it Zillabug.”

 

“That’s nice.”

 

Lance sighed, she wasn’t listening. He strapped her chestplate on and let the silence be.

 

Within minutes they were walking down the hall towards the lion bays, but Pidge was shaking with each agonizingly short step. Her drained and depleted state was painfully evident. The battle would be over before they made it to the hanger. With a silent prayer that she wouldn’t gouge his eyes out, Lance bent over and scooped Pidge up in his arms. She squeaked in alarm and protest. 

 

“Hey, stop hitting me! It’ll take forever to get there at your pace. Now, hang on, I’ve got long legs for a reason.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! another chapter!
> 
> A little mental mindscape magic for everyone.  
> And Lance and Pidge... Lance really is quite forgiving. Bless him. And Pidge really needed a friend after all of that.
> 
> Next chapter we'll get to see if Pidge can come to terms with what she's done, see if she can reactivate her unresponsive lion and find out if the team can manage to form Voltron after all that's happened. How WILL this new level of bonding work out for them?
> 
>  
> 
> [A little love for Zillabean-bug](http://zillabean.tumblr.com/post/153782451192/zillabean-commission-snug-as-a-bug-in-space)


	13. Voltron in the Corner Pocket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge has been Rescued! But can she re-forge the bond with her lion and will she be able to form Voltron with the team after all she's done?  
> Will they be able to defeat the Galra fleet?
> 
> Will the author kindly stop asking silly questions and get to the story? Yes, yes she will.

 

     Lance set Pidge on her feet in front of the green lion. Apprehensively she looked up at the great, quiet bulk. It was so… silent. Not even the hint of the energy that normally surrounded all the lions, even if they were ignoring you.

  
  


“Lance…”

 

“Hey, do n’t worry about it. Just apologize, make up, and let’s go kick some Galra butt.”

 

     “I’m not sure it’ll be that easy.”

 

He slapped her on the shoulder, nearly knocking her over. “Nonsense. You’re always making things harder than they need to be. I think you secretly enjoy it. Now, get in there. I’m gonna go get my lion and I’ll bet I can be in the air before you can, even with having to run all the way back to the other side of the castle first.”

 

“Yeah, sure…” she mumbled, distractedly. “You do that.” Then as he turned to leave she called out, “Lance! Wait.”

 

He turned back with a questioning eyebrow. “I have to go, Pidge. Blue is getting impatient. The others need us.”

 

Gulping, she managed to blurt out, “Thank you. And… I’m sorry.” With the tears in her eyes, she almost missed his hesitant grin.

 

“No worries, gremlin. Let’s use those demonic powers of yours for good instead of evil, eh?” With a pair of cheerful finger guns and a click of the tongue, he was gone and she was left with her judgemental and unresponsive lion.

 

Hesitantly, she reached out and touched the cold metal. Nothing happened. Pidge had never really worked on developing that bond with her lion beyond the basics. They communicated well enough during battle and other than the echo of curiosity in the back of her head while she was doing projects, she had never given it much thought. 

 

Now, though, she wanted what Lance had.

 

The mental image of what she had just shared with the other paladins was still fresh in her head and Pidge reached out with her mind, sent a spark of her own quintessence seeking the pathway that would lead to a connection. A spark of invitation, the quintessence of apology and regret. There was an echo in the stillness. An awareness turned towards her. 

 

Pidge’s breath caught in a moment of anxiety as the lion’s consciousness picked up her own and turned it inside out like a predator inspecting a piece of meat it believed to be flawed, poisoned, unhealthy. Meekly, she offered herself for judgement. Every corner of her mind open and available. 

 

The green lion was thorough and very strict in its requirements. There was little room for grey in its thoughts. A thing either was, or was not. Middle ground was a very narrow path. Pidge knew she was capable, but worthy? That would be for the lion to judge. Was she still worthy? Could she pick up the bits of her life that her mistake had shattered and piece it all together again to create a working whole? 

 

There was a waiting demand that hovered over that question. The lion wanted an answer. Could she? Did she have the courage to go forward? To face the pain that her actions had caused?

 

Honestly, Pidge didn’t know. But… she wanted to try. She needed to try! Her own resolve solidified. She wanted Green to accept her. She was clear of doubt and taint. The Galra had used her own weakness to trick her but it would not happen again. She would not allow doubt to poison her against her friends a second time. 

 

__ _ Yes. Mine. _

 

In a moment, Pidge found herself scooped up and deposited in the lion’s cockpit. Boards hummed to life and the lion took off. They were already in space before Pidge got over her surprise enough to settle firmly into her seat and turn her comm signal and tracker on.

 

Her heart dropped into her shoes. She hadn’t realized the fleet had gotten quite this big! They must have been reinforced while she was incarcerated. There were now two immense cruisers, currently pounding the ship’s defenses with their huge ion cannons while a full complement of support ships attacked the lions; including a dozen battleships and the swarm of fighters that were currently chasing Red. 

 

Keith was dodging in a frenzy and Pidge was just about to jump in and try to get some of them off his tail when a flash of blue behind the battleship Keith was heading for caught her eye.

Oh, so that’s what they were planning. She grinned and sat back to watch the fun. Keith rocketed around the ship in a big loop with the fighters on his tail like an angry horde of wasps. Now that she was paying attention, Pidge could tell that the red lion wasn’t going all-out. She was practically dawdling, staying just out of range but close enough to give them the idea that they could catch her with just a little more effort. Fully occupied, the Galra drone pilots flew straight into the surprise of their lives as the blue lion engulfed them in an ice beam just as Red’s tail cleared the engine casing that Lance had been hiding behind.  

 

The swarm barreled right into the stream of ice, unable to turn aside. Lance had managed to disable about 80% of them and the rest, either quicker or farther behind in the pack, scattered in disarray. Keith swung completely around the ship once more and with gleeful abandon, fried the immobilized Galra fighters while Lance whooped. “Yeah! Get’em! I can’t believe they fell for that a third time!”

 

“Well, they won’t fall for it a fourth, so don’t try it again.” Shiro’s voice rang out with a stern caution.

 

Pidge broke in, “Hey guys, need some help?” There was a pause in the radio chatter, a moment of silence which broke into cacophony.

 

“Oh yeah!’

 

“About time.”

 

“Oh thank God, I was getting worried.”

 

And one of Shiro’s relieved sighs, which made her grin.

 

“All right, team. Let's form Voltron and get this situation under control before the castle’s particle barrier fails. We need to take out those cruisers and their ion cannons.”

 

There was a nervous churning of butterflies in her stomach as Pidge touched the others through the lions. Would they accept her? That was a silly, nervous thought. She didn’t deserve it, but of course they would. They already had. A deep breath and she let herself be caught up in the something  **more** that was Voltron. 

 

Pidge always experienced a thrill when the giant robot formed. The great power, being able to control it and guide it… the sheer robot-ness of it! It was like a dream come true but she’d never dreamed this big. Lance would tease her so much if he ever knew how it made her feel.

And possibly, he would already know. Pidge could feel new emotions through the link with the lions now.  Very similar to the calls that had guided her out of the horrible chaos she had been lost in. The voices that had brought her back into clarity and starlight.

 

The mutual astonishment of the other paladins verified that she was not alone in this experience. Apparently the recent bonding had brought them together in an unanticipated way.

Time enough to explore that later. Preferably under controlled and verifiable lab conditions.

Now was the time to fight. The fleet had taken notice of Voltron’s presence and one cruiser was shifting its bulk to bring that deadly cannon around to bear on them while the smaller ships flocked in to keep them occupied.

 

Unfortunately, they were doing a decent job. Hands and mind busy with the fight, Pidge couldn’t keep track of that cannon’s slow progress. Hunk, on the other hand, always had an extra eye out for potential trouble. “That thing’s gonna have us in its sights within two minutes, guys. Be really nice if we could be somewhere else when it’s ready to fire. I mean, if that’s ok with you. I’d really rather not be toasty this early in my young life.”

 

Voltron had grabbed one of the smaller ships and flung it into a second one, which careened off in a violent spin and hit a third. Pidge had an image flash through her head of pool balls on a green table. Lance had once talked them all into going down to the Garrison Rec center... and had been thoroughly schooled by Pidge and Hunk. Hunk had managed to edge Pidge out on a tricky bank shot that had sunk two balls at once. She had to admit, that had been a great shot. But, what did you expect when you were playing against and engineer? There were no hard feelings on her part, although Lance had pouted until Hunk had promised to make him one of his famous sandwiches back at the dorms. Had that image come from her, or one of them? It didn’t really matter because that cruiser had finally managed to swing itself around and start powering up the cannon. Still, the image persisted in her head. Connections, links, collisions and consequences. She had an idea. An inspiration. Pidge withdrew from the connection slightly, leaving the others to fight, so she could concentrate on her plan.

 

Quickly Pidge pulled up the battlefield on her screens. Too small. She cross-linked to the castle’s computer and had it check the positions and trajectories of the other ships in the fleet. Not many of them were left. Most of the smaller ones were inconsequential or in the wrong quadrant. She discounted them and made allowances for the debris field. She set the computer to tracking any pieces large enough to be an issue. The battleships had all been taken out, the only real factor was the second cruiser. The one that was pounding the the particle barrier that protected the Altean ship. She watched the castle’s barrier flicker. A warning from Allura came over the comm system. Pidge only half-heard it. She was busy.

 

“Bank shots, stupid geckos with ten thousand laser eyes, Galra ships with guns too big for their britches…” muttering under her breath, she worked the numbers a second time and came up with an answer of... potentially possible. Not as much reliability as she’d like. Hunk would be appalled by the possible failure percentage. The odds were ones that Lance “The Tailor” would cheerfully embrace. Even so, Pidge supposed it wasn’t entirely hopeless.

 

“Shiro! We need to summon the shield. Now!” 

 

“Pidge?” Shiro’s tone was questioning.

 

“Trust me. And Allura, you need to move the castle around so it’s closer to us by eight degrees. Sending you coordinates. You need to shift within the next 20 ticks or you’ll be in the line of fire.”

 

“Understood! Under the current barrage our particle barrier will fail in 15 ticks. Please hurry.”

 

“Wait, what are we doing?” Keith’s confusion was understandable but poorly timed.

 

She screamed internally at the limitations of vocal speech. Pidge didn’t have time to explain to all of them. She concentrated on their bond once more and sent the image in her head as strongly as she could. There was a pause as they all assimilated the information.

 

“What? Oh. Ohhhhhh.” Hunk was on board.

 

“Do it.” Bloodthirsty, but direct. Completely Keith.

 

“Got it. Let’s go.” Shiro’s approval gave her confidence.

 

“Heck yeah! I love lasers and mirrors.” Lance’s delight took some of the edge off the dangerous thing they were about to attempt. Timing would be key. No. Timing would be everything.

 

“Paladins!” Coran called out. “The barrier is failing, it’s up to you.” In fact, the Castle’s barrier was shredding like fine lace in a gale.

 

Pidge summoned the great shield. Partially made of energy, partially of matter, it was entirely huge; and hopefully it would be enough to withstand what they were about to attempt.

 

She could feel Lance and Hunk brace for the impact and the insubstantial sensation of Keith's steady hands on hers gave her confidence and helped her hold it steady. 

 

Shiro brought them around to face the purple, glowing barrel of the Galra’s ion cannon, setting them firmly in front of the deadly machine. Likely the ship’s commander was preparing his self-congratulatory speech on how he had single-handedly tracked down and defeated Voltron. He’d never have a chance to deliver it. They were in place and ready. There was a burst of confidence in her mind as four other sets of eyes confirmed the angles she had set.

 

Pidge sweated. Billiards never had stakes higher than these.

 

The Galra ion cannon fired and the energy pushback from the beam wobbled them for a moment as the hot energy contacted the shield and slid along the surface. It deflected off into space, narrowly missing both the Altean castle-ship and the second Galra cruiser.

 

Was it Keith that firmed their stance? Was Lance the one that shifted the shield’s tilt so the plasma bolt seared across the bow of the cruiser? Or had it been Hunk? 

 

Was that Shiro’s savage delight as the beam cut into the second Galra ship like a hot wire through cheese? Or was it her own as it exploded in a coursucating burst of colors?

 

Did it matter? Based on the delighted relief that was felt by all, no.

 

The shield shimmered and dissipated as the energy that created it reformed into the blazing sword. Within a handful of ticks, Voltron charged in while the cannon was attempting to recharge for a second shot and with one swing against its unprotected hull, sent the other cruiser to the same fiery fate as its sister ship.

 

Allura’s “Well done!” rang through the comm lines and triggered a wave of satisfaction that rolled through the link. A link that was fading as the need for it passed. Communication transitioned from the lightning-fast bursts of information to the more familiar and suddenly stodgy-feeling realm of the verbal. Once again, they broke apart into their individual lions and minds.

 

“Ok, team, good job. Let’s head back to the castle and get ourselves out of here before anything else happens.” There was a light pause before Shiro added, “And it’s good to have you back with us, Pidge.”

 

Voices of agreement all around, with one exception. “I think I saw something move off to the right. I’m gonna go check it out. You guys go ahead, I’ll circle around, make a perimeter check and make sure we’re all secure before I come in.” 

 

“Keith,” Shiro started to say that it was his job, as leader, to secure the field but Keith had already taken off and was almost out of sight as he rounded a large chunk of the derelict cruiser. Shiro growled in exasperation, “At least leave your comm channel open this time!”

  
“He’ll be ok, Shiro. You know how he gets. He just needs some space. And time.” The last thing Keith expected to hear before he turned his comm unit off was Lance acting as a voice of reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well! One to go!  
> Last chapter will go up within the week if everything goes as planned. It's been giving me a bit of trouble so we'll see.


	14. Reconciling Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How DO you apologize to your friends for almost killing them? Flower shops don't deliver to space.

 

Keith felt like he was running away and he hated it. Him. Running. Like a coward. But, he needed some space and some time away from the others to assimilate what had happened. Being that intimately close had exhausted him emotionally and his nerves were feeling raw.

 

He wanted the open quiet of the desert where the wind shushed over the hardpan and only the occasional insect broke the silence. It was the perfect place to think without interruption.

Since that was unavailable, the vast emptiness of space would have to do.

 

But, before that, he had to make sure that, other than the clutter of debris, the local space really WAS empty. One long loop around the battlefield let him do a perimeter check and Keith relaxed, relatively certain of being undisturbed for a while. He turned the incoming comm back on, in case of emergency, and settled in. Red would alert him if any strange ships appeared.

 

Keith closed his eyes and took a deep breath, relaxing back into the surprisingly-comfortable cockpit chair. Calm now, he began to collect his thoughts. They were just scattered, zipping around everywhere without an actual direction. He needed to get them all sorted and bring them back inside his own head. And, not incidentally, make sure all the thoughts in there were still just his and not little leftover bits of others. Keith had always been afraid of letting others in. For him, this new level of communication was horribly intrusive and took a bit of getting used to. Not that the other paladins weren’t his friends, he trusted them. Didn’t he?

 

Red rumbled in the back of his mind.

“Yeah, I know it's ridiculous but that's the way I feel.”

 

She chuffed. 

“No! I don’t mind you in my head. I have no secrets from you.”

 

A questioning rumble.

“Yeah, we humans don’t share everything we think and feel, like you do. It's called privacy.”

 

A sense of astonishment, followed by disapproval. Keith had the sense she found the possibility for misunderstanding unacceptable. He laughed lightly.

 

She snarled.

“Sorry, sorry… I just don’t want to lose track of who I am. Forget the things that make me uniquely me, and not Lance or Shiro or Pidge.”

 

She sent back a strong image of fire, power, speed and reckless abandon.

He smiled. “Yes,” he scolded, “That is a big part of who I am but you know there is more and the other parts are important too.”

 

He received a grumbled and reluctant acknowledgement. 

They sat in silence for a time. Pidge still had him worried. Yes, he had fought tooth and nail to get her back but now, here she was, and he was uncomfortably aware that on one level, he didn’t want her here. Keith looked into the dark and admitted to himself that he was afraid of her now.  _ The feeling of hot metal piercing his side. The lack of expression in her eyes as she prepared to end his life.  _ All the horrible things she had done. He knew she was a genius but he had never considered that she might turn that against them. Could it happen again? 

 

What if it did? What if one of the others went bad? Lance, or Hunk? Ok, probably not Hunk… But Shiro was still vulnerable. And, he hated to admit it, but he was a weak spot as well. Maybe even more of one than the others. Impulsive. Violent. 

 

Red purred smugly in the back of his head. Those qualities suited her just fine. Keith laughed. She always made him feel better when he started doubting himself.

 

“Thanks, Red. I came out here for some quiet time and ended up spending it all talking with you, but I do feel better so let's go back to the castle.” Red’s engines roared to life. 

 

\-----

 

Pidge sat against the wall in the red lion’s bay, waiting for their return. The other four lions were all safely secured...or tucked in for the night, depending on which paladin’s nomenclature you used. Pidge had been hugged and squeezed and buffeted around by the boys. Later, she would apologize to Allura and help Coran repair the cameras and strengthen the computer systems she had put so full of holes.

 

Right now, she was just tired. In this quiet moment she found herself sitting on the cold floor, nibbling cookies to soothe her nerves and thinking while she waited for their red paladin to return. She had already made her peace with the other three.

 

\-----

 

Hunk had found her first. 

 

Pidge was finishing her post-deployment checklist, running through the lion’s systems and looking for problems that would need correction before the next mission. “Green, it looks like we’ve got a loose hip-plate in section C-5. Can you verify?” A red light blinked on her console and steadied. A notation appended itself to the repair file and Pidge knew Coran would be notified. “Thanks.”

 

A purr rumbled like static in the back of her head. Pidge smiled and continued down the list of systems. She felt the lion’s attention shift away from its pilot to something outside, in the hangar. 

 

“What is it?” A visual popped up and Pidge was startled to see Hunk’s large, yellow form standing in front of Green’s jaw. What was he doing here? Hunk practically babied his lion. His obsession with his lion was like Lance’s obsession with skincare. He was well known for refusing to leave her before she was completely restored and in perfect condition. He had literally dragged Pidge away from her own projects several times in order to help him with repairs that he swore had to be done “immediately”.

 

“What if Zarkon’s fleet popped up right now? What would we do? The lions have to be ready to go, Pidge. This is way more important than any communications anomaly that you can play with after dinner. Besides, if I don’t get this done, dinner will be nothing but food-goo because I won’t have time to prepare anything else. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?”

 

It was exasperating, mostly because Hunk was ten times better at a guilt trip than her mom had ever been. So, the fact that he was standing below her lion, shuffling from foot to foot, looking like he was debating whether or not he should knock, really didn’t leave her any options. The guilt kicked her extra hard today. She knew Hunk had been hurt badly, they all had. She remembered that she had fully intended to kill every one of them. Whether or not she had been tricked into doing so, her intentions had been clear enough. At the time, she really had wanted to kill them. 

 

The spell of influence and the electrical shock to her system had left her with one truly horrible side-effect. A swiss-cheese memory. She literally could not remember most of the things she’d done to them. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Pidge knew that deep down, she could be a terribly vindictive bitch. Nothing would keep her from accomplishing her goals and, as Iverson had found out, rules were something she could put aside without the slightest twinge of regret. So, the fact they had actually survived her efforts meant one of three things; either they were all really, really lucky, they were all much more skilled and talented than she had calculated, or she really hadn’t been trying to kill them after all. 

 

Maybe it had been a combination of all three. In any case, she should take care of Hunk before he had an anxiety attack.

 

Pidge opened the external comm speakers. “Hey, Hunk. Thought you’d still be with your lion. I’m almost finished here. Wanna come up?” Green settled down and opened up for the yellow paladin without being asked. Pidge knew her lion liked him, they all did. Yellow paladins were just that way, apparently. A burst of static in the back of her mind told Pidge that yes, Green did like the yellow pilot but he wasn’t “theirs”. A second impression followed that was far more complicated. Green apparently found him sweet, but boring. Boring was a terrible thing. Pidge smiled.

 

Hunk almost squeaked in alarm as Green’s jaw set down less than a meter from him. It was only a short climb up into the cockpit. Pidge felt her lion tune out as Hunk arrived, no longer interested. “Hey, Pidge. How you doin’? I was kinda worried about you this whole fight so I wanted to check up on you first thing.”

 

Yes, she knew. The five-way link they had shared had told her that she was unequivocally forgiven by all of them, amongst a wealth of other information. But still…It would be awhile before she would forgive herself.

 

“As well as can be expected, I suppose. I’m a bit tired.” Tired was actually too small a word to describe how she felt.

 

“Hungry too, I bet.” 

 

“Not really.” She’d been weeks without anything substantial as food. Her body was on a starvation-regimen. The thought of actual food both repelled her and made her mouth water.

 

“Oh. Really? Well, I’d better make some adjustments to my list then.”

 

“List?” What in the world was Hunk talking about?

 

“Oh yeah. On our way back in I thought about how it looked like you’d lost weight. Like, a LOT of weight. I mean, you were pretty small before but now you just look horrible too.” 

 

“Gee, thanks!”

 

“I’m sorry! I don’t mean it in a bad way. I mean, you’ve been through a lot and I bet they didn’t feed you very good. So, on our way back in, I wrote up a diet for you. Based on what we have here in the castle, I’ve calculated the optimum foods and portions to get you back into shape in the shortest period of time. I’ll have to adjust it now, though. I forgot to factor in a smaller appetite.” he apologized sheepishly.

 

Pidge just stared at him in jaw-dropping astonishment. “Um, thank you, Hunk.”

 

“Oh!” Hunk pulled a small bag out from somewhere. “It’s gonna be a little bit before dinner because I hadn’t gotten prep started before this last battle because we had just gotten back from the raid to rescue you and all, and I still need to do the rundown on my lion, so I thought you might need a little something to tide you over.” He handed her the small mylar bag and she could feel the small circle shapes through the crinkley package.

 

“Cookies?” She looked down at the bag in her hand. “Are these cookies from your special stash? I didn’t know you had any left. I thought Keith and Lance had found and eaten them all.”

 

“Nah, I left those for them to find. I had these hidden in my lion. You eat them. Please?” His voice was so earnest she couldn’t refuse him.

 

“I will.” she promised with a smile.

 

“Can I… is it ok if I hug you? I mean, you look so thin and delicate right now I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

He was so anxious. Even though she knew it would hurt, she nodded. “Yeah, go ahead. I won’t break.”

 

Carefully, he enfolded her in his huge arms. She hugged him back with as much strength as she could muster. He mumbled, “I'm so glad you're ok. I wasn't sure you were still our friend after all that but Keith said so. He refused to hear anything bad about you or believe you didn’t need rescuing. He's really hard to argue with. But he was right. I'm so glad he was right.”  Quickly, he released her. “I gotta run! Lots of stuff to do. You eat a couple of those cookies, ok?” Before she could reply, he was gone. She was left alone with her thoughts, amazed once again at Hunk’s caring nature.

 

Pidge sighed. “Green, what did I do?  My memory is so shredded and wrong. I don't think I remember any of it.” The last clear memory she had was the Galra firewalls blocking her off, cutting off her strategic retreat as she tried to pull out of the base’s computer and retain the information she'd gained. If she'd just dumped the data, she could have unplugged and run. But the mission would have failed and her pride wouldn't allow that. She remembered the panic, the flash, the burst of pain and fire, but after that it was fuzzy, full of holes and static.

 

Obligingly, her screens lit up. Recorded playbacks and images filled the cockpit on multiple views. Datastreams showed computer code and time stamps. Pidge collapsed slowly back into her chair and watched in horror as the events of the last month unfolded in front of her eyes. 

“Oh sweet Tesla. Thank you, Green, for trying to warn them. And thank you... for protecting Keith.” Tears blurred her vision as she rewound the playback again to watch as the green barrier pulsed and engulfed the red paladin before Pidge could strike. 

 

\-----

 

Shiro was the next to find her. Pidge was making her way down the short hallway that connected the green lion’s bay with the larger hangar when he came across her. Their exchange was short and while not as painful as she’d anticipated, there was a lot left unsaid between them.

 

He froze in his tracks upon spotting her. It was a long moment before he moved forward again. Shiro cleared his throat and in his best leader voice said, “Good job today, Pidge. Glad you’re back with us.” He placed his right hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. She could feel the metal fingers through her armor and once again wondered how much sensation he had in that hand. Would he let her run tests some day? Based on their current level of trust, it would be a  _ long _ while in the future if it ever happened.

 

“Thank you,” she mumbled. “It’s good to be home again.” She ducked her head and refused to meet his gaze. There would be things in his eyes she didn’t want to see right now and there weren’t enough words in the world to express her own growing horror at what she’d done. 

 

He patted her shoulder, “Make sure you get enough rest. No staying up late working on stuff for a while.” The concern that leaked into his voice was hard to resist and she smiled sadly.

 

“Yes, Dad.”

 

She could almost hear him rolling his eyes. He huffed instead. “I mean it.” The tension eased as they fell into a well-used exchange.

 

“I know. I’ll take it easy. I just want to do one thing before I head back to the common room. I’ll see you there for dinner.”

 

With that, and one more pat on the shoulder that, if things were less tense between them, would have been a hug, Shiro walked back the way he had come.

 

Pidge watched until he turned the corner before she continued on her way. Her shoulders slumped. There would be more conversations between them. The kind that happened in the middle of the night, in the dark of the empty hallways. Broken, tentative discussions of the Galra, nightmares, fears and the tenuous, fragile hopes that kept them both going. Healing, for both of them, would take time and more effort than one afternoon and a bag of cookies. Still, she would make sure it happened. A promise to them both.

 

\-----

 

Lance had found her as she crept towards the red lion’s bay, heavily leaning on the wall for support. He gave her a big grin and a wink with finger guns as he passed her on his way to the common room. She had returned a shy smile and whispered “Thank you,” with all the heart she could muster.

 

Lance chirped, “Hey, no problem.” He paused long enough to give her a look of nervous concern that may or may not have been feigned. “Ummm, I'm heading for the shower… you wouldn’t happen to know what the water temperature is set at, would you?”

 

She laughed weakly, dying just a little inside because her actions were the reason he needed to ask. “Whatever it was yesterday, I suppose. I haven't been back long enough to check.”

 

“Oh! That’s right. Should be safe enough, then. Please promise me you’ll never try boiling me alive again?”

 

Solemnly, Pidge replied, “I promise. I will never, ever, turn the water temperature up in your shower again.” And she finger-crossed her heart for good measure.

 

Lance sighed in relief and with a wave continued on his way. Six long strides down the hallway he jerked to a stop. “Waitaminute! What do you mean, ‘never turn it UP’? Sweet cheese and crackers, you’re plotting to freeze me to death now? Piiiiiiddddge!” 

 

The sweet sound of her laugh echoed lightly back to him.

 

\-----

 

Now, exhausted by the effort of getting from one lion bay to another, she sat with her back against the wall and just concentrated on not passing out. Had the castle always been this friggin huge? She knew it was and always had been, but knowing it and feeling it were two separate things.

 

Pidge pulled out the small bag of cookies and nibbled on one while she waited.

 

It was a long wait. The battle had been a welcome distraction but now it was over and she had plenty of time to think. And, since she was sitting on the cold floor of the rest lion’s bay, her thoughts revolved mostly around its pilot. The one who had pulled himself out of the paladin-meld as soon as he could and had run off after the battle to either pout or brood or something.

Pidge, in the meantime, was left here to brew in her own guilt and stare at the blank walls of this empty metal cavern. Vast, and yet it was barely big enough to contain the red lion. 

 

Pidge peered more closely at the walls, measuring them with her eye. She could check it against the castle’s schematics later, but she was fairly certain Red’s bay was the mirror-image of Green’s. Same size but while Red’s was shining and immaculate, Green's showed signs of her occupancy. It had mysterious stains on the floor, carefully collected bits of tech piled into corners and grooves in the flooring where the legs of the worktables had gotten pushed around. Really, she ought to see about cleaning the place up a bit. Maybe after the next project...

  
  


Pidge sighed. She was just distracting herself with idle thoughts and she knew it.

There was a lump in her pocket. Just a little something she had picked up off her workbench. It had been lying exactly where she had left it. What had compelled her to pick it up in the first place, she didn’t know but now it burned a metaphorical hole in her pocket. Better, she supposed than a real one. With a bitter twist of inner distress, she pulled the object out and turned it over in her hands. The bright orange handle was still smeared with flaking bits of dried blood.

His blood.

Her fault.

How could he possibly still consider her a friend after all of that?

 

It was a long wait. She found herself nodding off long before the proximity alarms went off. They startled her into full wakefulness and she fumbled as she hurried to stuff the soldering tool back in her pocket. Looking up at the giant robot cat that was coming in, preceeded by the residual chill that smelled of the vastness of space, she felt a flutter of anticipation in her stomach and the clutching drop of anxiety. For a moment she regretted eating that cookie. Along with everything else.

 

As the red lion landed, Pidge had the eerie feeling that the sentient robot was eyeing her with reproach and warning. Not undeserved. Red was most protective of her pilot. If their altercation had taken place in the red hangar, Pidge would likely not have survived. Red would not have settled the matter by simply moving a particle barrier. No, the ending would have been far more permanent for someone.  A golden gleam reflected off the lion's eyes.

 

After a while, Pidge found herself struggling to stay alert. The adrenaline of the battle was long gone and her body screamed for sleep in a comfortable bed, but she crept to her feet, pulling herself upright by using the wall. She leaned heavily against its support as she waited for Keith to run his checks and come out, doing her best to ignore the baleful glare of the lion.

 

When he finally emerged, she realized she wasn’t as ready for this as she thought she was. It wasn’t physical weakness making her tremble now, it was nerves. No need to be afraid. It's  _ just _  “Keith.” His name slipped out as a whisper of exhaled breath that magnified itself as it bounced around the hangar. Shit. How had she managed to settle into the one acoustically-perfect corner of this vast space?

 

It hardly mattered. Keith’s hearing was exceptional. He would have heard her in any case.

He had seemed lost in thought as he exited his lion, but his head swiveled her direction instantly. He paused for a long, hesitant moment. The tension grew in the long space between them as they both stared uncomfortably at each other. Finally, before the suspense could frazzle her nerves any further, Pidge let go of the wall and took that one, long step.

 

One step forward, and another. She was halfway to the red lion when the castle shuddered. Princess Allura was creating a wormhole. Startled, and caught off guard, Pidge tripped over her own, wobbly feet. The weak puppet-strings that kept her upright had been cut. She felt her legs suddenly lose all strength and knew in that heartbeat, that even with her hands held out in front of her, the landing was going to hurt. A lot.

 

And it did. Her palms stung, and if asked, she’d blame the tears that leaked from her eyes on her new abrasions. Her arms trembled. Stubbornly, she locked her elbows and refused to just fall over and rest on the floor. It was a matter of pride. And not incidentally, the knowledge that falling over would mean it would be further to get back up.  

 

In her tunnel-vision, she had forgotten all about Keith. She didn't feel the thud of heavy footfalls against the floor and didn't notice a red helmet set down on the floor next to her. A gauntleted hand touched her arm and she winced away from it with a gasp. But it was only Keith, not the Galra. He knelt in front of her, his voice full of concern as he said, “Are you all right?”

 

As she looked up at him, the image of an empty eyesocket and runnels of blood superimposed itself on his face, strident screams echoed in her mind and she recoiled again with a stifled moan. The tool in her pocket was a heavy weight. Pidge shuddered and tried to push the image away. _ It never happened. It never happened. Green saved him, it didn’t happen that way. _ She forced a deep, heaving breath and with the hum of her lion resonating in her skull, opened her eyes again.

 

“Pidge?” Keith’s voice was urgent with worry.

 

She stifled the rising panic and looked again. His eyes were clear. They were whole. He was alive. She leaned heavily on the support of Green as she confronted the horrors fabricated in her mind and the equally mortifying reality of what she had actually done. The pain of it sat in a lump in her chest and created an aching void.

 

Panic grew. The breath sobbed in her chest. Large, painful heaves that brought no relief and no real oxygen. Her head felt light and spots danced in her vision.  _ Hyperventilation. Stop it. _ Easier said than done.

 

She had tried to kill one family in her desperate quest to find the other. So stubborn, so blind to anything else around her that she had almost lost sight of the important things in her life. Almost lost sight of her importance to them. They needed her to save not just her family but the whole universe.  As Keith had once said, “Everyone in the universe has families”. And, that was true for most people. Except him. Keith’s family on Earth was gone. The paladins were all the family he had. And he fought so hard to protect them. Why couldn’t she do the same? One burning track of shame crept down her cheek. And then another.

 

“Pidge,” rising concern thickened Keith’s voice and lent it urgency, “what’s wrong? Why are you sitting here? Why aren’t you resting? Were you waiting for me?” He pulled her up until they were both kneeling, his eyes searching her face, trying to decipher the tears. She had pulled away from him and now she was shaking with silent sobs. “Are you ok? Please talk to me.”

 

His voice was so sad that something finally broke loose inside her. The floodgates opened. Maybe it was the comforting smells of sweaty paladin and the grease used in the lions. Maybe it was the alien thrum of the engines as they transited through the wormhole. -- Idly, Pidge noted that one of them was out of alignment. --  Maybe it was the protective way he held her, like Matt always did when the other kids teased her about playing with robots instead of dolls. Whatever the cause, it seemed the right time had come. Pidge started babbling out an apology and once the words started, they just wouldn’t stop.

“I'm so sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. I stabbed you. I wanted to kill you all because I was just that angry and that was so horrible of me. I don’t even know why, now. I was wrong, I was hateful and I hurt you all and I can’t believe I did that because you're my family as much as my brother and my dad are and I was evil. I am so sorry, Keith…”

 

Her voice was muffled against his chest plate as she sobbed, hot tears of shame rolling down his armor. She hiccuped. “I was such an idiot to think I would be happy if I got them back that way. There’s no way I could go home without you guys. I love you all so much.” His arms tightened around her in that awkward way Keith had. She hiccuped again as he patted her slowly on the back.

 

“Pidge,” Keith tried again, his voice intense and tight with pain, “Don’t you ever doubt that we would do anything for you. Anything.” He pulled her out to arm's-length so he could stare her in the eyes. “Never leave us. Never again.” He flexed his fingers on her arms, “You mean so much to all of us, you’re so much a part of our team...” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and whispered, “If you leave us a third time it would kill me. You’re part of the only family I have.”

 

As he pulled her back in for another hug, Pidge felt his warm tears fall on her cheek. She ignored them, simply letting them merge with her own. He would never forgive her for pointing them out. She gripped him as tightly as she could in a return hug and thought,  _ Yes, this is home, too _ . Her lion purred static in the back of her head.

 

Finally, the press of armor against armor became too uncomfortable for either of them to stand for another moment and they pulled apart, sniffling and with faint, embarrassed smiles.

Keith stood and carefully brushed off his armor, clearing his throat and putting on a stern face. Pidge looked up at him and raised her eyebrow. He rolled his eyes in mock offense and with an exasperated puff offered his hand.

 

She chuckled at the expression on his face and took his outstretched hand. With a careful tug, he hauled her to her feet. “C’mon let's go. When you're feeling better we can go down to the training deck and you can show me what you did to program the ‘bots. Lance and Hunk haven’t had time to fix the deck yet and I’m itching for a good fight.”

 

She frowned. “I'd have to lock the safeties back in place.”

 

He scoffed. “I doubt there's a need for that.”

 

“What?” Outraged, she pounded lightly on his arm as he started walking her towards the living quarters. “I programmed them to kill you. You'll be dead without the safety protocols!” He snorted again which only further incensed her. “I would have gotten you myself if my lion hadn't saved you. You're not as good as you think you are, you pompous ass. You're predictable.”

 

Stung, he protested, “I am not!”

 

“You totally are, Keith.”

 

“I. Am. Not!”

  
“I knew you would say that.”

 

“Aargh! Remind me again why I wanted to rescue you?”

 

“Because we’re family.”

 

“Yeah,” he grinned at her, “We are.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is.  
> *Author wraps a bow around it and gifts it to you*
> 
> Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this monstrosity. Well, ok... compared to some it's not but over the last 4 months this has grown to 38,000 words! Literally the longest story I've published. And thank you for putting up with the growing pains in the middle.
> 
> Do keep your bookmarks in place because I want to explore what would have happened if Allura had failed and the paladins had all become corrupted. (I am working on finding a plot.) I confess, I'm having difficulty letting my baby go.
> 
> I also have 3 prequel stories and a sequel to another story sitting in my brain clamoring for attention. As well as a couple of 1-chapter shorts.  
> Plus whatever evil thing my muse comes up with at 4am tomorrow.  
> Siblings want attention. 
> 
> This will not be the last story you get from me!


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